A summer full of innovation
How I spent my summer 2018
As we bid farewell to summer 2018, I realize that I have done so much in the past period and since I have been not so active on social media for a while, I am making this worth publishing. Well, to start with I was not on vacation! In spite of feeling tired, I wouldn’t have wanted this summer to turn in any other way.
Seychelles trip
My first proud achievement for this summer is accompanying my daughter Hala to the Seychelles to participate in the Trust for Sustainable Living (TSL) Children conference and debates which focued on SDG 14 (Life Below Water) after she qualified as a finalist in the International Schools Essay Competition. Hala has written about her plan to save the oceans and she has received a medal as the 6th place winner (worldwide) in the essay competition. She has also debated in front of other kids from all over the globe and her team as ‘citizens’ won over the other teams of ‘government’, ‘scientists’ and ‘businesses’. Her accomplishment even made it to the IC main news page on the website.
Since then, Hala is determined to make a plan in writing for every single SDG and, being the social entrepreneur mom I am, I am supporting her in every single way I can. Am one proud mommy!
Of course our one week stay at the Seychelles was not all work. We got the chance to swim in the Indian Ocean under the rain, drink some fresh coconut, and get to know a great group of parents and students from International College and hang out together.
MSFEA Youth Summer Program
After I came back, I got busy preparing the final touches for the first ‘Engineering for Good’ Youth Summer Program at the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture (MSFEA) at the American University of Beirut (AUB). This is another proud achievement for me because I was not only successful in convincing the leadership to host a program for pre-university students that exposes them to engineering and entrepreneurship skills and how they can use them to make the world a better place, but they also offered to completely sponsor this program as a faculty. Receiving over 200 applicants, we hosted 32 pre-college students for the last 2 weeks of July in the beautiful AUB campus where they learned more about engineering in a team-based and hands-on manner accompanied with fun activities. It was indeed an amazing experience for them, me, and all the AUB students who assisted in the program and helped make it a success. By the end of the program, 8 teams pitched their ideas and demoed their Internet of Things (IoT) solutions to help alleviate pollution and waste-related problems in Lebanon with 2 lucky selected winners.
We always follow up on our students and the participants/beneficiaries of our innovation programs. We are extremely pleased that the top winning team of the program (iLight) has won second place in the Beirut Startup Weekend which took place during the last weekend of August at AUB. The team of iLight comprised the youngest team in the competition. The same group has also chosen to participate in the Global Compact Network Lebanon National Sustainability Youth Competition and the results will be out on the 18th of October!
Mentoring
I had the honor to be asked to mentor once again one of the teams in the Humanitarian Engineering course which is a very special course given at AUB in partnership with Boston University and John Hopkins University in the US. This time, the topic my mentee team was working on was very dear to me since it is about enhancing access to education for Syrian refugees in Lebanon. The team comprised of 4 inter-disciplinary Boston University students and one AUB engineering student and the team actually won in the final competition!
I had also the pleasure to mentor as part of the INJAZ company program in its special edition about ‘Women in Tech’ this year, another great team working on an education problem as well using Augmented Reality technology. For 12 weeks, the MaktabaTech team and I have been sitting together for 2–3 hours each time and discussing the progress of the business in its different stages. They will be pitching on October 5th, so our final pitching preparations are underway.
For me, mentoring is one of the most enjoyable and most fruitful learning and giving-back experiences that one can be involved in!
EU Madad Labs II Qudra Social Entrepreneurship Training
I also got recommended to apply for a training bid on ‘social entrepreneurship’ as part of the EU Madad Labs II also known as the Qudra Program. Thankfully, my company won the bid given my strong background in the subject as both an academic at AUB and as the founder of Riyada for Social Innovation SAL which specializes in social innovation training. It was an ultimate pleasure to provide a one-week training on social entrepreneurship for extremely ambitious young men and women coming from various backgrounds and many of whom are Syrian, Palestinian, or Yemeni refugees in Lebanon. It was heart-warming to see how my training helped shape their digital business ideas that they were developing in the program to help alleviate problems related to the refugee crisis and their hosting communities. Of course many challenges accompanied the training such as the language barrier where I am used to give similar training in English but this time had to conduct the entire training in Arabic. Nevertheless, this was a great learning opportunity as the the most rewarding experiences are the most challenging ones!
Now when I see the 4 participating teams pitch their business ideas and prototypes after they have finished their entire training, I simply feel more hope and faith that our future can only become better with this generation that is being trained to become the #SocialInnovators and #ChangeMakers of the Arab world.
‘Robotics for Good’: Touch-Riyada Youth Innovation Summer Program
This summer, I had the chance to re-live one of the best experiences of summer 2017 in an updated and enhanced version. For the second year, Touch Lebanon partnered with Riyada for Social Innovation SAL in its Youth Innovation Summer Program as part of the #SummerofInnovation2018 intiative. This year, the theme was ‘Robotics for Good’ and 28 pre-college students spent 2 weeks gaining hands-on hardware and coding skills in addition to entrepreneurial and community engagement skills in order to develop a robotics solution to a healthcare-related problem in Lebanon. The closing ceremony of the program took place in the Grand Serail with the VIP presence of MP Rola Tabsh.
With honor and pride, we have received amazing feedback about the extremely high quality students’ business ideas and prototypes that were presented at the end of the program in front of highly esteemed judges from the engineering and business fields. We can only promise that we will keep offering superior quality Youth Innovation Programs in partnership with great corporate partners such as touch Lebanon so that we create a new generation of young and social innovators and engineers in Lebanon and the Arab world!
Changemaker Festival
To wrap it all up, I was honored with a request to be a workshop partner in the first Changemaker Festival which took place on Sept 8–9 in New Biel. I have been using the #Changemakers hashtag for a while in all the activities related to Riyada for Social Innovation SAL because our mission is simply to create youth change makers who use technology and entrepreneurship to make our world a better place. In addition to offering a workshop on “Accelerating women careers in technology and entrepreneurship” in the festival, we had the honor to organize a “Social Innovators Meetup” where around 50 youth actively shared their plans and projects to make change in Lebanon and beyond. I was super happy to see many of our youth innovation programs’ participants since our business inception and until today show up to the meetup. They did not only share with others how their mindset has shifted thanks to the program experience but also how they now believe more than ever in their capabilities to use technology and entrepreneurship to make a real difference. You all make us very proud!
In conclusion, I have a few words to say to summer 2018: You have been extremely hectic, fast-paced and simply crazy AND I loved every single moment of it all! I hope summer 2019 can beat that!
