Headline August 11, 2018/ '' 'STUDENTS -GIRLS- SUPREMOS' ''

'' 'STUDENTS -GIRLS- SUPREMOS' ''

TWELVE TEAMS MADE it to the finals of the ''Technovation Challenge'' in San Jose, California, presenting apps that tackle problems in their communities.

The Palestinian teens compete in the senior division against teams from Egypt, the United States, Mexico, India and Spain, for scholarships of up to $15,000.

The competition, now in its ninth year, is run by Iridescent , a global nonprofit offering opportunities to young people, especially girls, through technology.

Palestinian Education Minister Sabri Saidan counts technology - along with a new emphasis on  vocational training to overhaul Palestinian schools, where many students still learn rote in crowded class rooms.

Youth unemployment - particularly among university graduates, is a central problem across the entire Arabic world, in part because of a demographic ''youth bulge''.

Last year, unemployment among Palestinian college graduates under the age of 30 reached 56 percent, including 41 percent in the West Bank and 73 percent in the Gaza strip, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

UNEMPLOYMENT is particularly high among female university graduates, in part because young women are expected to marry and raise children., while young men are considered the main breadwinners.

However, employers  also complain that graduates studying  outdated or irrelevant courses often lack the needed skills for employment.

Saidam said Palestinians schools have received 15,000 computers in the last couple of years. His ministry has also established 54 bookless ''smart schools'' for grades one to six where students use laptops and learn by doing, including educational trips and involvement with their society.

Meanwhile, the Technovation challenge has already been a life changing experience for al-Sayed and her teammates Zubaida al-Sadder, Masa Halawa and Tamara Awaisa.

They are now determined to pursue careers in technology.

'' Before this program, we had a vague idea about the future,'' said al-Sayed, speaking at a computer lab at An Najah University in her native Nablus, the West Bank's second largest city.

''Now we have a clear idea, it helped us pick our path in life.''

The teens/students first heard about the competition a few months ago from an IT teacher at their school in a middle-class neighborhood in Nablus, where IT classes are a modest affair, held twice a week, with two students to a computer.

And not too far away from the epicenter of this great story on the Palestinian heroic student girls , another group of Saudi girls were just beginning their visualisation in a Saudi hackathon to seek high-tech fixes to Hajj calamaties.

Scrawled algorithms and programming codes on a whiteboard to design an app to help non-Arabic speakers translate instructions into multiple languages without an Internet connection.

With nearly 3,000 programmers - who ate and slept at the venue - organisers said Saudi Arabia had broken the Guinness World Record for the largest number of participants at a hackathon.

While their solutions are still untested, an event which ended on Friday and offered cash prizes of around 2 million riyals [$533,000] was billed as an invention marathon by organisers.

''We aim to upgrade the experience of hajj for all pilgrims from all over the world,'' said Naouf al-Rakan, chief executive of the Saudi Federation for Cyber Security and Programming, which organised the event.

''This hackathon will enrich that experience, will give us plenty of solutions and ideas that we can actually adapt and invest in, she declared.

Saudi Arabia's custodianship of Mecca and Medina - Islam's two holiest sites - is seen as the  Kingdom's most powerful form of political legitimacy.

But series of deadly disasters over the years have prompted criticism of the Sunni kingdom's  management of the annual pilgrimage, most notably from arch rival, Iran.

In September 2015, a stampede killed up to 2,300 worshippers - including hundreds of Iranians - in the worst disaster ever to strike the pilgrimage.

With respectful dedication to all the Female Students, Students, Professors, and Teachers of the world. See Ya all ''register'' on : wssciw.blogspot.com - The World Students Society for every subject in the world and Twitter-!E-WOW! - the Ecosystem 2011:

'''' Pitch & Path '''

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SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless