.:ABOUT US:.

AL-MUNTADA
is a non-governmental and a non profit Palestinian organization; established in 1996 in Ramallah-Palestine. Its services cover West Bank and Gaza.

Al Muntada's mission is to contribute to building Palestinian democratic civic society by scoping its work in education.

Al Muntada's approach is urging especially school age children to critical, logical and creative thinking.

Al Muntada's Philosophy is; OBSERVE- LEARN- CREATE. Thinking critically is the umbrella of the three stages. Teaching children to think critically is the very powerful method to create a democratic and liberal society.

Why education of children? Al Muntada's intention is to achieve historical fundamental and positive changes regarding its mission, which is democratic society! The topic education of children is obviously the field, where basic elements of democracy can be conveyed. Democracy however, is a corner stone of a civic society. A choice of democracy in a society can only be made by open - minded and liberated citizens, who were taught freedom of expression in their childhood age by learning questioning and arguing in all issues. The very first start is though to enable school children to think critically, logically and creatively.

Background:

The idea arose in 1994, when Prof. Waleed Deeb, currently the President of the Arab-American University in Jenin (AAUJ), returned to Jordan from the United States after an absence of nearly twenty years. Upon his work in Palestine, few years later, Dr, Deeb observed classrooms and became dismayed at the lack of positive progress in education that had been made since he had left to pursue his higher studies.

Along with other prominent thinkers in the field of education, Dr-Deeb realized that the colonial-style authoritarian teaching methodology is still in the use in Palestinian classrooms produces new generations that only know how to dictate or obey the dictator. To break his mental and societal "bottleneck", he initiated Al Muntada, the Young Scientists' Club.

In Apriel18th, 1994, at Birzeit University, Dr. Deeb called for the first round of a pilot project that consists of a series of learning workshops which utilize critical and creative thinking approaches among school-aged children. The workshops / think shops were conducted in coordination with local educational institutions. The announcement in the newspaper had been listed under the title "for the elite students", as coordinators usually assume. Dr. Deeb had immediately changed it to "encouraging creative and critical thinking among children", to project the core idea of the workshops.

Following this changes, a great number of children huddled to the workshop. Only 23 of them could benefit. Now the number of children currently active at Al Muntada workshops is almost 5000. During the workshops children were exposed for the first time in their life to skepticism as a matter of intellectual restlessness. They explored on-hands experiments. They had to provide their own hypotheses as to answers. "What do you THINK?" said Prof. Deeb to the participating children as they tried to know whether the answers were right or not, in order to motive them to arrive at a "correct" solution after analyzing other possible outcomes and disregarding those that are inaccurate. Since 1996 ten training programs were conducted targeting teachers of schools from different areas to convey the mentioned concept in teaching children.

Mission:

Al Muntada's mission is to contribute to building Palestinian democratic civic society by scoping its work in education.

Why education of children? Al Muntada's intention is to achieve historical fundamental and positive changes regarding its mission, which is democratic society! The topic education of children is obviously the field, where basic elements of democracy can be conveyed. Democracy however, is a corner stone of a civic society. A choice of democracy in a society can only be made by open - minded and liberated citizens, who were taught freedom of expression in their childhood age by learning questioning and arguing in all issues. The very first start is though to enable school children to think critically, logically and creatively.

Vision:

Al Muntada's Philosophy is; OBSERVE- LEARN- CREATE. Thinking critically is the umbrella of the three stages. Teaching children to think critically is the very powerful method to create a democratic and liberal society.

Objectives:

1- To strengthen and broaden critical, logical and creative thinking among school- aged children (ages 6 to 18);

2- To train school teachers on modern teaching methods, that encourage critical, logical and creative thinking among children;

3- To expose children to practical technology in order to encourage them in practical learning;

4- To carry out activities that enable children to question and make appropriate decisions, solve problems and - by doing so – build their individual and collective self-esteem;

Strategic activities:

Al Muntada's main three activities are: first, training school teachers on the methods of raising intellectual restlessness and second, establishing School Thinking Centers; third, conducting short term oriented projects in different subjects of education, such as Science, Environment, History and Democracy. What makes these projects different is that they involve children actively through a methodology pre designed by experts, who also supervise the implementation. A project goes usually in 3 phases:

1- Defining a problem: e. g. our school is deserted, needs green area but gardens need continuously clean water, which the school cannot afford it because of water shortage.

2- Bringing understandings to students through discussions and experimentation: e. g. children hold hands - on experiments on plants, drink water, grey water and kind of water they need. The experiments are accompanied by think shops, in which children discuss and question and think putting thesis and hypothesis so long to come at the end to create their own solution, which is expected to be using grey water of the school and choosing plants that need less water and plants that produce oxygen to clean up school air.

3- Implementing the resulting project to deliver concrete product. The implementation follows by children themselves, they have to design the implementation phase by themselves too.

BOARD OF Directors:

Staff:

Volunteers:

Al Muntada has been always independent and not sponsored by any governmental or non governmental institutions. The work achieved based mainly on efforts of tens of volunteers, motivated by their deep belief in the great impact and efficiency of this undertaking, some of whom are permanently active:

Name	Speciality	Participation
Mr. Raed Budier	B.Sc. Chemistry	Director with part salary
Ms. Basima Zaroor	B.Sc. Science	Training and coordination
Mr. Waleed Deeb	Prof. Dr. Math	Designing learn material
Mr. Sami Amin	B.Sc. Computer Science	Training and coordination
Ms. Suzan Bertoni	MA. Teaching	Fundraising
Mr. Muhannad Brake	Eng. Interior designer	graphic design
Mr. Bilal Jayusi	B.Sc. Computer Science	Web design
Mr. Ali Abu khader	Diploma TV Production	Documentation
Ms. Feda Al-Agaha	B.Sc. Science	Administrative & Financial/ Gaza
Mr. Naser Al-sumary	B.Sc. Math	Training and coordination/Gaza
Mr. Zuheir Wadi	B.Sc. Science	Training and Coordination/ Gaza
Ms. Ferial Mansour	PHD candidate Education	Training teachers
Mr. Edriss Titi	Prof. Dr. Math	Designing learn material

 

Annual Reports:
 

	Year	download
	2004
	2003
	2002