Since the launch of Tatawwar: Building Tomorrow’s Minds, from HSBC and Potential.com, 4650 students from over 1000 schools across the UAE, Egypt, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Algeria, have registered in the programme. The Tatawwar team are hosting a series of workshops in each of these countries with the first three workshops in the Tatawwar: Building Tomorrow’s Minds programme in Dubai (18 January 2020), Abu Dhabi on 25 January 2020 and Bahrain: 25 January 2020.

The workshops provide the 250 shortlisted projects with the tools to make their projects a reality. At the end of each workshop, A panel of judges across all the workshops will then select the top 20 to participate in the final round in Muscat, Oman in April 2020, where they will develop their projects further with the aid of extensive coaching from industry leaders.
The top three winners’ prototypes will be showcased at the HSBC sponsored UK Pavilion at Dubai Expo 2020, and will also receive cash prizes of $5000, $3000 and $1500 respectively.

So far, this year, Tatawwar has received 4650 projects, from over 800+ schools across 7 countries in Middle East & North Africa.
Tatawwar: Building Tomorrow’s Minds is an interactive online and face-to-face programme that brings together students aged 15 to 18, schools, parents and the business community to innovate for a sustainable future by addressing one of three United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals:

1. Climate Action
2. Human Health and Well-being
3. Clean Water and Sanitation

The programme offers a series of learning resources to support students as they develop their innovative ideas. The most promising will be invited to in-country workshops to be held in January across the region, to build their initial prototypes.

Two of the Tatawwar previous winners have launched their crowdfunding campaigns on Zoomaal.com to kick start their projects. Samah Abdullah from Egypt and Zoya Naeem from the UAE have come up with innovative solutions to address the water scarcity challenge.

The next workshops in February are scheduled for:
• Cairo, Egypt: 1 Feb 2020, AUC – gate 4
• Kuwait: 8 Feb 2020, Sabah Al-Ahmad Center for Development and Innovation
• Doha, Qatar: 8 Feb 2020, QBIC – Qatar Business Incubation Center
• Muscat, Oman: 15 Feb 2020, venue to be confirmed.