Shell and Ibtechar celebrate three-year NXplorers milestone
Shell in Qatar and Ibtechar are celebrating a milestone, with their partnership turning three this month. Since kicking off their collaboration, over 20 workshops have been held at public schools across the country.
In 2019, Shell appointed Ibtechar its key partner for the NXplorers programme, an innovative education programme aimed at equipping the next generation of talent with the tools and skills they need to reimagine the world and create sustainable solutions to real-world issues.
Shell NXplorers is a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programme currently running in 18 countries around the world. The version implemented by Ibtechar in Qatar is designed specifically to support Qatar National Vision 2030, by taking young people on a transformational journey into a new way of thinking to enable them to bring about positive change.
As the delivery partner, Ibtechar holds learning-by-doing workshops for school students in the 11-14 age group, putting in its unique expertise as a local innovation initiator/promoter to help them develop the skills, understanding, and mindset to address today’s major global and Qatari challenges.
So far, 20 workshops have been held at public schools under the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, including Qatar Foundation schools. Program tools, methodologies, and teachers’ training were provided by Ibtechar.
These workshops allow the students to explore the reality, look at things differently, see opportunities, and build future scenarios for such current global issues as energy, water, food, among others. More importantly, the workshops connect education and application, helping the students gain a new vision, both inside and outside the classroom, to apply their learnings and make their ideas real.
During the programme, students are given a total of 10 hours of support and guidance sessions to complete their projects. By the end of programme, they are required to submit their projects, and a jury chooses the winning NXplorer schools, which are announced in an awards ceremony.
The workshops are instructed by experienced trainers from Ibtechar. Those facilitators are qualified under the Training of Trainers model to coach selected school teachers on the programme’s methodology. They are aided by teachers and volunteers from Qatar Scientific Club and STEM ambassadors from Shell.
To ensure the programme’s learnings are lasting, Ibtechar provides post-workshop support to students. It also assists the teachers in the preparation process for national STEM and NXplorer school competitions.
Demonstrating the effectiveness of the Shell NXplorers programme, surveys with the teachers engaged in the programme highlighted that students had undergone a “considerable change” in terms of attitudes, creativity, lifestyle, and perspective.
