On Saturday, 27 July 2024, students from the Bethlehem and Hebron schools participating in the STEAM PalHouse clubs presented the preliminary versions of their projects. This took place at A.M. Qattan Foundation headquarters in Ramallah. The Jenin schools also implemented the same event, which took place at the Youth Thought Forum in Jenin due to the difficulty of access and dire road conditions.
Each school worked on three projects over the course of 2 1/2 months. These projects were presented before an Evaluation Committee consisting of experts and specialists, who in turn provided critiques on the projects. There was also a discussion on projects between club members, who shared their ideas and interventions to improve. This helped prepare to display the projects by the end of the year.The students also shared their experiences and aimed to link similar projects together.
Launched at the beginning of this year, STEAM PalHouse builds upon the foundation’s cumulative educational work experience over recent years in the science education field under informal contexts. The initiative expanded ns through establishing specialized STEAM clubs in West Bank schools, including Duma Secondary School for Girls, Duma village; Ad-Dhahiriya—Hebron; Thabra Mixed Primary School in Thabra village, Bethlehem; Sumayya Bint al-Khayyat Higher Basic School for Girls, Yamun, Jenin; and Kafr Dan High School for Girls, Kafr Dan village, Jenin. This was done in partnership with the Youth Thought Forum in Jenin and the Belgian Development Agency (Enabel), with joint funding from the Belgian government.
Student work was divided into two phases. The first was the preparatory stage, where students learned about the goal of finding solutions to local environmental problems facing Palestinian society, and solutions for problems facing marginalized groups. The teams comprised 10 students (from sixth to ninth grades) in each respective school, who expressed their interest in topics related to Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM).
This project was launched between February and March 2024. The work initially focused on building the club’s identity by collectively choosing its name and designing a logo, after which “Design Thinking” meetings were held to formulate key project ideas.
The second phase of the project included holding eight monthly student-led meetings for each club, in which female teachers facilitated. This stage was accompanied by field trips which highlighted biodiversity and discussed prevalent environmental problems in Palestine and their causes. This enabled students to envision their projects, as this phase provided the necessary tools.
The two phases resulted in 12 projects: “Zero Waste Kitchen,” “My Smart Garden,” “I Create My Own Energy,” “Longitudinal Agriculture,” “Automated Irrigation,” “Integrated Automatic Irrigation System,” “Hydroponics,” “My Smart School,” “Water Tank Project for Solving the Problem of Marj Sanur’s Drowning,” “Solving the Problem of the ‘Drowning Valley’ (Marj Sanur),” “Environmentally Friendly Smart Parking,” and “The Illuminated Staircase.”
Iman Omar Ateek and Rasha Mustafa Shoula, who work as facilitators at Kafr Dan Girls’ Secondary School, noted:
The STEAM project, with its five components, is a golden opportunity for students to understand the environmental problems around them and how machines work, and how to use science to create products that serve humanity, as well as enhancing problem-solving abilities and self-reliantly finding alternatives. . . . Our six months of participating in this project brought about a qualitative shift for us and our students. The programme provided valuable information in an interesting way for our students, and it strengthened their personalities and problem-solving methods. We have witnessed a paradigm shift in our students’ thinking and ways of solving work-related problems. This was done in a smooth and scientific manner, while taking into consideration the accounts and safe usage of tools when working on the design.