Rising Sun Executive Director Jodi Pincus goes to the WISE Summit in Qatar
You can read on day one here.
Day 2
After a depressing morning session that focused on how far away the world is from reaching the UN millennium goal of all children having access to primary education by 2015 — 58 million to be exact and two thirds of those children live in conflict zones, refugee camps or are dealing with Ebola — I decided to go to workshops that focused on hands-on learning where I learned by doing not just talking and listening.
I went to a Lego workshop where I built a spinning top out of Lego, built a machine to make it spin and then programmed it to spin using the computer.
I teamed with a woman from China and we entered into a competition to see which team’s top would spin the longest based on design and programming. I thought we would definitely win, but unfortunately our top fell off the table, so we were disqualified. I didn’t win the Lego prize for Alejandro, my 3 year old son. The workshop was refreshing and clearly demonstrated what 21st century education should be like.
Again, we feasted on an abundance of food, although it is toned down since the last visit and I enjoyed watching all the woman in their newly fashionable Abaya’s, which are the traditional dress that the woman wear. The abaya’s have gone through a fashion trend where they used to be only black and now they are adorned with different designs and pops of color.
In the afternoon I took a break and went to the Persian Gulf harbor to see the sea with another woman from San Francisco. I finally got a sense of the country. All the buildings are sandstone, and from a city planning perspective, this city is not designed well and far from sustainable. It is prone to traffic jams and impossible to walk.
I returned to my hotel and got ready for that evening’s Gala, during which I spent most of my time talking about education, fundraising, politics and traditional clothing with a variety of people from all over the globe. It was a very fun, elegant, and enlightening evening.
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