Omnia Education Partnerships had a joy to participate in the graduation ceremony of the first Acting as an Innovator program, held under the patronage of the Minister of Education, Prof. Dr. Marwan Awartani and in the presence of UNRWA representatives in Ramallah and Gaza. The event took place in 29.9.2022 at the Qattan Foundation in Ramallah, and via livestreaming at the Phoenix Hotel in Gaza. The ceremony was attended by teachers and mentors participating in the program, representatives of QF partners and donors, and a number of officials, educators and academics, in addition to many individuals and institutions involved in the education sector in Palestine
The ceremony presented the projects that were developed and implemented by the participating teachers during the program to provide solutions to challenges they face in their educational environment. During the ceremony, the teachers were also awarded with EU-accredited certificates, as Acting as an Innovator is one of three modules of the EU program “Specialist Qualification in Product Development”, according to the requirements of the Finnish National Agency for Education and Omnia, the Joint Authority of Education in the Espoo Region, Finland.
The closing ceremony marked the end of the five-month piloting program involving twenty-four teachers from different regions and schools in Palestine. The teachers were divided into twelve teams supported by eight mentors working on different projects under the umbrella of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), STEM and STEAM. The teacher’s projects engaged about 868 students from different grades ranging from 1st to 11th grade, and various people from the school and the local community cooperated with the teachers to bring their projects to life.
About the Acting as an Innovator program:
The Acting as an Innovator program aims to empower 400 Palestinian teachers from the West Bank and Gaza over the course of three years, and spark a positive and innovative digitally inclined development mindset among teachers in Palestine. During the programme, the teachers are equipped with tangible tools to help spark their imagination to identify challenges in their learning environment, and design and develop solutions to the challenges in the form of powerful and impactful learning projects with a digital dimension. In this way, impact is maximised throughout the entire learning ecosystem.
Learn more about the Acting as an Innovator program via our Customer Cases, and see the videos about the Acting as an Innovator projects and program implementation, as well as impressions of the participating teachers of the first cohort:
https://www.oep.fi/educating-palestinian-teachers-to-act-as-innovators/
Graduation ceremony 2022 in Ramallah:
All photos © Qaddumi Foundation
