WISE’s Doha Learning Days kicks off with celebration of 2022 WISE Awards winners
He festival’s informal, lifelong learning activities are open to the public until Feb 4
INNOVATION in education marked the opening of the Doha Learning Days Festival at Msheireb Museums on Wednesday. The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), Qatar Foundation (QF)’s global education initiative, honoured the six 2022 WISE Awards winners, selected from among projects worldwide for their innovative approaches to pressing education issues and positive impact on their communities.
The ceremony, hosted by Ahmed Al Mansoor, an educator at Qatar Academy for Science and Technology (QAST), one of QF’s Pre-University Education schools, turned the spotlight on global education challenges and the role of WISE in recognizing and encouraging innovation to find new ideas and solutions.
Fostering a vibrant learning ecosystem is a goal at the heart of WISE’s Doha Learning Days (DLD) Festival. In an outdoor setting at Msheireb Museums, the event will showcase local initiatives and encourage the community to take part in over 50 hands-on experiential learning activities with a strong youth empowerment focus. The festival welcomes the public until February 4.
HE Buthaina bint Ali Al Jabr Al Nuaimi, Minister of Education and Higher Education, delivered a special address during the opening in which she congratulated the awarded winners for their innovative and inspiring projects in addressing a number of global education challenges socially, environmentally, and economically.
She added that such activities and projects urge educators to awaken motivation and reflect on education as a value and impact, to believe in the capabilities of young people, and the role of education in refining and investing these capabilities. And that always leads us to pose exciting challenges and inspiring competitions in which we target young people, not only to win awards and incentives, but for higher goals represented in employing science and knowledge to improve the quality of our lives, and the lives of others around us.
The minister pointed out that the interest in youth energies and directing them through optimal guidance has led the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, in cooperation with the Doha International Family Institute at Qatar Foundation, and a group of partners in the community, to launch a programme called ‘Tansheaa’ targeting young people by preparing and strengthening [the aspects] that direct their energies to benefit them and their communities, and at the same time protect them from everything that may cause the waste of the most valuable wealth, which is our human wealth. She reiterated that our progress depends on teamwork and collective innovation.
Stavros N Yiannouka, WISE CEO, announced that the 11th edition of the global biennial WISE summit - one of the largest and most influential education gatherings - will take place on November 28 and29, bringing an international network of educators and innovators to Doha to collaboratively share ideas and creative solutions to pressing challenges.
In recognizing the six WISE Awards winners, from Mexico, Qatar, Kenya, India and the US, the ceremony celebrated the projects as models of excellence that inspire innovative, creative action to support equity, access, and quality education. Qatarbased teachers and practitioners can gain more insights from the six winners by registering for the exclusive WISE Awards Masterclass Series on Saturday, February 4.
The importance of providing fair and equal access to education was the focus of the keynote speech by Zubair Junjunia,
CEO and founder of ZNotes.
Aside from the public programme, the festival welcomes schools invited by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education for two full mornings of workshops and pop-up activities. Among the highlights from the first sessions today, Swiss Wealth Manager and WISE DLD Strategic Partner, Julius Baer, presented a masterclass ‘How to invest’, to help youth get their financial journeys started. Middle school students learned practical entrepreneurship skills in a masterclass with Injaz Qatar.
Beginning today, Thursday, until Saturday evening sessions run from 5 pm to 9 pm with activities for all ages and interests. Younger learners can look forward to Tarsheed storytelling and daily media and broadcast production workshops with Al Jazeera Media Institute.