A wonderful story from CNN about three Palestinian refugee girls, their science teacher, and their head-teacher who have all contributed to the girls’ success in being selected to participate in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in San Jose, California, this week.
(HT: American Friends of UNRWA.)
The 14-year-old girls are all students at the UNRWA Girls School in Askar refugee Camp, near the West bank city of Nablus. Their project involved designed and making a walking-cane for blind people that beeps when it comes near either an obstacle or an un-even-ness in the road ahead of it.
It sounds like a great invention– especially given the extent to which all Palestinians in the West Bank, whether sighted or blind, have to navigate rutted roads riven with deep IOF-dug trenches or blocked by IOF-built earth mounds, as they try to move around.
(Hey, imagine how much more these girls and all their classmates might have achieved if their families didn’t have to live in refugee camp hovels but were still living on their ancestral lands, and if they had been able to win the benefits of normal economic development over the past 62 years… )
Still, what they have achieved is fabulous; and it looks really useful. Congratulations to these smart young females!
It might be worth noting– for those people who still think that Islamic-style hair-veiling is a sign of backwardness or the oppression of females– that all three of these dedicated girls, and their science teacher, and the head-teacher who enabled the whole project, wear such veils. It is quite likely that the science teacher and the head-teacher (who, CNN tells us, is about to retire) are both refugees, as well.
Kudos, finally, to UNRWA, for sustaining this whole, really important school-system throughout all these decades.
One thought on “Palestinian refugees beating the odds!”
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if they had been able to win the benefits of normal economic development over the past 62 years… ” In other words more like Jordan, Syria or Egypt where booming economies have built impressive universities where scholars come from all over the world to study. And with so many technical innovations from these countries over the last 62 years that well, where would one even begin to list them.
But I am happy for the three girls. I hope they cam make something of their lives. It won’t be easy and not just because of their refugee status. That veil thing is “a sign of backwardness or the oppression of females” despite what you want to believe.