Tuesday 20 July 2010

Education for a better you

Back in May, I went to an open day at Dubai knowledge village, it was a non profit community event that hosted over 100 free workshops and classes from dance to languages and arts, it was so much fun, very engaging, and the tagline was " its a great day to learn something new "

I'm not really good at describing things, you can check here if you want to learn more. what inspired me to write about it today, was when I went to Jara Market, I was looking around for something to do, like everything there was on display for selling purposes or food consumption. but it doesn't envolve the visitor much, and people are on the recieving end most of the time. even in universities, its like its a job to be a student and I think its awful. when did learning stop being attractive? do you think our community and surrounding encourages learning?

I was talking to one guy at Jara who sold Mosaics, then I thought to myself, why don't they bring the material and let ppl do their mosaic themselves, it would be more meaningful and engaging, I do believe a tourist would want to try making mosaics or pottery while in the market, and not have to go to madaba to do it.

one of the things I found fascinating in the market in Istanbul is that sellers spoke Arabic, English, French, Turkish, spanish and Japanese! they are quite exposed to cultures, while our average JO, doesn't know much and is sucked in, we have a language center at JU , why don't they hold an open day for public not only students and give basic 1 hour classes around the day! we have resources, Im trying to address a community that really has no access to learning beyond formal education. the most important stuff we learned, we didn't learn them at schools. we gained them by practice.

this open day I attended, everything was free and all institutes from dance to fitness to languages and coaching engaged all age groups on the campus throughout the day and offered their services if you want to sign up later, so you get to provide something for free for the community but it pays back because at the end of the open day, you get people wanting to sign up and I believe its worth it. learning events is as important as cultural events.

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