Palestine Telecommunication Company signed yesterday a memorandum of understanding with Forum for Young Scientists. As per memorandum, the two parties cooperate to establish a number of centers of excellence to stimulate thinking and creativity in different areas in Palestine. The project aims at securing a suitable environment for children to show and practice their distinguished capabilities in the field of information technology as part of a social responsibility strategy which the Company decided to dedicate for excellence for this and the coming year to stimulate thinking through education.
On launching the project at this time in particular, Mosab Khorma, Palestine Telecommunication Company General Manager said: “Despite our grief for the martyrs and despite all difficulties and the critical conditions over previous years, we decided to launch a project to support creativity and excellence in Palestine. This project forms a pillar for our future and the future of our children under the umbrella of science, knowledge, discovery of creativities and energies concealed within our Palestinian community”.
He added “we expect that current surrounding conditions make us more determined on developing and polishing our capabilities. We live a continuous challenge that does not only threaten our lives but also challenges our ability to think and achieve. We think that this period is the most suitable to launch this project. We could broaden the scope in the eyes of our Palestinian children to prove to the world that they are capable of excelling despite the irregular conditions under which they live”.
Adopting such an idea, Palestine Telecommunication Company is one of the leading companies in Palestine that assumed this path of supporting the theme of creativity and excellence through well studied plan based on scientific standards and measures. Paltel conducted an internal poll whereby all employees participated. Employees expressed their desire to adopt issues like creativity, excellence and motivation of the different categories in the community each in their field.
Scientific Approach:
Khorma added that “we arrived to this idea of adopting project proposal by reading the Palestine Telecommunication Company employees’ attitudes which comprise sample categories of the Palestinian community. We followed a scientific methodology to achieve measurable and accurate results via conducting the internal poll. Most employees agreed that choosing the theme of creativity and excellence through education, therefore we decided to support them.
Palestine Telecommunication Company will start implementing the creativity and excellence through education project among children after the signing of the memorandum of understanding. This will aim at developing and upgrading the creativity, and young people’s energy through holding societal partnerships with different active local institutions in the fields of creativity and excellence.
The aim behind this step, Khorma said: “is to create a suitable environment for the different categories in our community to express their creativity and genuine abilities through the support of specialized institutions”. He further added: “We hope that we will be able to provide as many children and young people as possible with an opportunity to benefit from these projects”.
Thinking Skills:
Raed Budir , Director of the Forum for Young Scientists said: “the aim of the Forum is to encourage children’s thinking skills, and increase their self-confidence for them to excel. He added that the Forum for Young Scientists methodology of work is based on giving the children the chance to discover through notice, experience, experiment, creativity and production”.
Dr. Walid Deeb, President of the Forum said that: we long worked with the foreign donors and did not realize that the Palestinian private sector companies are willing to support our activities. Therefore, we did not try to claim any support from these companies. This Memorandum of Understanding signed with Palestine Telecommunication Company will support many activities for the coming year. The memorandum proved that our previous point of stand deems wrong. We are pleased with this Palestinian-Palestinian cooperation and encourage all parties to follow this path.
Dr. Abdul Malik Jaber, CEO of Paltel, who attended the subsequent press conference after the signing, announced that Palestine Telecommunication Company will focus on supporting the underserved and less privileged areas in Palestine through conducting similar projects to support creativity and excellence through education.
Increase the number of Centers:
He stressed that Palestine Telecommunication Company and after studying the situation in Northern West Bank and Gaza, decided to increase the number of centers of excellence created in cooperation with the Forum to give an opportunity for a large number of people in the less privileged areas to participate. Additional areas to those listed in the memorandum will be served”.
The Memorandum of Understanding that was signed between the Palestine Telecommunication Company and Forum for Young Scientists states that the Company will support the Forum to establish three new centers, in addition to renovating old centers in Hebron, Nablus, Gaza, Khan Younis, and Ramallah. The programs will support distinguished thinking in addition to other activities that motivate and stimulate creativity and polish children’s mental abilities.
Palestine Telecommunication Company in cooperation with the Forum will support three summer camp activities for Paltel employees’ children. Summer camps will be named “camps to discover” and will comprise many children and activities that aim at developing and uncovering children’s skills and hobbies.
It is worth mentioning that Palestine Telecommunication Company is studying the possibility of creating a Public Data Network in Palestine. Such a project will enriches information environment, distinguished thinking, creativity and excellence.
