Doha – QatarDebate

With great youth efforts and in partnership with a group of educational institutions and leading companies in Qatar, TEDxYouth was launched last Saturday, January 18 and was held at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar. TEDxYouth Al-Dafna a day-long event for middle and high school students, included live speakers, hands-on activities and great conversations.  

It is worth noting that the Organizing Committee has received more than 80 students to audition for the conference and conducted a set of performance experiences for the applicants, with a choice of 6 speakers with various speeches of interest to the targeted group of youth under the age of twenty years. The list of speakers included Yousef Al-Maliki, student from the secondary stage, Mohamed Khalid, Engineering student in Education City, in addition to the brilliant media presenter Asma Al Hammadi, Ola Hijjawi from the Astronomy Branch of Qatar University Alumni Association, and Alia Issam El-Din, Teaching Assistant at Carnegie Mellon University Qatar, and Dr. Anwar Fathallah, the most active translator on the TED platform.

The six speakers provided an eclectic day of presentations, each taking less than 18 minutes under the TED organizational guidelines.

This conference youth edition is distinguished by being a student initiative fully organized by volunteers from high school students and some undergraduate students, besides the basic speeches the conference also included a group of training workshops, an interactive exhibition, and a media competition targeting high school students. The conference comes in partnership with the most prominent educational institutions in Qatar, where the QatarDebate Center participated as an organizational partner, Teach for Qatar as an educational partner, and Qatar Charity as a community partner. Ibtikar Technology Solutions also participated as a franchise partner, and Virginia Commonwealth University as a hosting partner. The conference partnerships also contributed to providing interesting and distinguished content through the training workshops and interactive exhibition, with the aim of enriching the experience of the participating students and developing their skills in various fields.

QatarDebate Center (QD) a member of Qatar Foundation (QF), and the conference’s organizing partner  stressed the importance of this youth initiative by saying: “We are very proud of all the youth efforts that have contributed to organize TEDx Al-Dafna Youth Conference, the conference has provided leadership and volunteer opportunities for young people through its creative way to spread the ideas  that contributes in young people awareness and motivation.” .

TED is a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading ideas through short speeches, known as TED talks. It was founded in 1984 as a conference about technology, entertainment and design (TED), but now covers multitudes of topics from science to business to global affairs in hundreds of languages and countries.

TEDx is a subset of TED conferences, all independently organized on the local community level.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group.