Newsletter

Welcome to the Global STEM Festival (GSF) 2021 - ‘creating real life solutions for real life problems’!

Dear Participant,

Welcome to the first GSF newsletter! The GSF programme aims to take you on a journey by giving you the skills to participate in an Ideathon in August. The problems you will be solving will be released in August, after which you will have three weeks to complete your submission. We will be providing you with weekly videos taking you through the design thinking process to give you the skills needed to complete the challenge. The problem statements are based on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) . For a quick overview please click here.

The newsletters are designed to give you an insight and starting point to help you understand these problem statements. This newsletter focuses on education and will cover:

A deep dive on education

News updates

Spotlights

Conversations you can have at the dinner table

Check out these videos showing an introduction to design thinking and a deep dive into the concept of empathy. These videos are the first in a series that will help you bring your ideas to life by taking you through the design thinking process.

Missed a newsletter? Don’t worry, you can find all of the previous newsletters alongside the supporting videos on the resources page of the GSF website.

Parents and guardians, don’t forget to have a look at the handy guide on the resources page to help you support the participants on their STEM journey!

Let's take a closer look at SDG 4 - quality education. The aim of this SDG is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Climate and Energy

Economic Growth

Education

Equality

Health

 Deep Dive on Education

It is likely that you may have not been able to go to school in the past year as a result of the pandemic, or lockdowns and self-isolation. For many, this may have been a strange feeling as we are often used to going to school almost every day.

However, for many children across the world, not going to school is a regular occurrence as they do not have access to quality education.

In this newsletter we will explore why education is so important and some of the innovative ways people have overcome the challenges they are facing with having access to education.

About 258 million children and youth were still out of school in 2018

A new study released in March by the UN shows that 100 million more children than expected, are falling behind the minimum proficiency in reading, due to COVID- related school closure.

So why does it matter?

Education is the foundation of hope for a better life, for yourself, the people you love and your community. It is an important part of growth and progress in society and key to escaping poverty. 

It helps to reduce inequalities and helps us to reach a state of equality no matter our gender, race, religion, culture or ethnicities. 

 Within Islam, education is also viewed as a way to engage with our faith and understand more about our Creator and the world around us. Education has a role to play in creating peaceful societies, stimulating creativity, intellectual curiosity so that we are able to adapt and thrive in a world of change. 

“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today “ - Malcolm X

“We live in a world of rapid change - change that is often predictable...the best way to manage change, whether positive or negative, is to prepare for it, and there is no greater form of preparation for change than investments in education” - His Highness the Aga Khan, Aiglemont, 2003

Where are people struggling the most to gain access to education?

Sub-Saharan Africa faces the greatest challenges in providing schools with basic resources. The situation is worse for younger age groups where less than half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have access to drinking water, electricity, computers and the Internet. There is also a gap between the number of people who have access to digital resources in developed and developing countries.

Are there groups that have a greater difficulty accessing education?

Yes, women and girls are one of these groups. About one-third of countries in the developing regions have not achieved gender equality in primary education. These disadvantages in education also mean there are fewer jobs available to women. This leads to women being financially disadvantaged compared to men

Did you notice?

The SDGs are all interconnected! Having access to quality education can also help us to tackle other challenges in the world such as equality, alleviating poverty, creating peace, leading a healthy life and understanding the importance of climate change. The link between these can be quite complicated though. 

There are also many barriers to education, for example, lack of hygiene or limited access to food and water. Can you imagine going to school without these things? It would be very difficult to learn!

This is why it can be challenging to provide access to quality education as there are many interconnected challenges involved. 

Education can provide us with many valuable skills and as we acquire these skills, think about what role you can play in helping yourself and others to uplift themselves and improve the quality of our live

News update

In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the globe, a majority of countries announced the temporary closure of schools, impacting more than 91 per cent of students worldwide. By April 2020, close to 1.6 billion children and youth were out of school and nearly 369 million children who rely on school meals needed to look to other sources for daily nutrition.

Never before have so many children been out of school at the same time!

Spotlights

The Soular Backpack

Salima Visram founded this project in 2015 to sell school backpacks to children in Kenya. The backpacks contained a solar panel connected to a battery pack that was then charged whilst the children walked to and from school. The children could then use this battery to power LED lamps in their homes for up to five hours. This allowed them to study and continue learning when they were at home at night. Electricity is also a cheaper and safer alternative light source for their families compared to the most commonly used light source which is kerosene — a fire and health hazard.

The backpacks were made in Kenya, demonstrating the value in using local resources and people, as this then created jobs and promoted upskilling in the community. Salima partnered with Disney to distribute the backpacks more widely in East Africa. A one-for-one initiative was also launched, whereby for every backpack purchased, another one was donated to a child in need.

Dinner Table Conversations

Our challenge to you: At the dinner table or when you’re out with your friends and family, think about the SDG theme of education and discuss further causes of these challenges and ways you can think of to overcome the challenges mentioned above.

 We hope that these will spark some insightful conversations and ideas

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Education has the power to change...

Age Banding 5-8:

• A skill is something you are able to do very well because you have practiced and put a lot of effort into learning it. What skills are you good at? What skill would you like to share and teach others?
• The more we learn, the more we understand and can explain things to others. If you could write a book about something that you have learned, what information would you share with others?

Age Banding 9-12:

• How is the SDG Goal of Quality Education linked to that of another SDG Goal? Can you find solutions that would help alleviate both problems at once? For example, have a look at SDG 5, Gender Equality, how can Quality Education impact Gender Equality?
• If you could design a school for the future, what would this look like? What physical features would you include? What subjects would you teach?

Age Banding 13+

• What barriers to quality education for all children do you think currently exist? Do you think every country experiences the same barriers, or do they differ?
• How do you think education has changed over the years (e.g. changes in subjects offered, for instance, Home Economics used to be very common for girls, but is now an unusual subject; introduction of iPads for students)? How do you think it might continue to change?