02 May 2024
Aspire Academy welcomed students from seven other schools for an event highlighting the importance of energy efficiency and conservation.
The event was hosted in collaboration with Kahramaa Awareness Park's energy-saving initiative under their Tarsheed programme, which aims to educate individuals on efficient water and electricity usage.
Under the guidance of Aspire Academy’s Leadership Development Programme Co-ordinator, Salah Al-Yafii, the grade 10 and 11 students took part in various challenges that involved trying to conserve water.
The games included trying not to spill water from a bottle as it was dragged on a trolley and working in teams to overcome obstacles while keeping the bottle as full as possible.
The schools also had the chance to try to knock over their opponents' bottles with balls and arrows as students rushed to pick up the bottles and conserve the water.
Other challenges involved trying to win extra water for your team, with the overall winner being the team that had the most water left at the end.
Following the events, Ali Qassem, a Tarsheed representative from Kahramaa, gave a talk to further highlight the importance of using water and electricity efficiently.
The presentation ended with a quiz for the students on what they knew and what they had learnt.
Fatima Saeed Al Mesnad, Head of Kahramaa Awareness Park, explained why her establishment was keen to work with Aspire Academy.
“The aim of collaborating with Aspire Academy on today’s event was clearly to reach out to the Academy’s talented student-athletes and make sure we introduce to them the value of rationalising and saving our resources,” she explained,
“Through this (Tarsheed) programme, we aim to cover all the school students in the country.”
“Although we appeal to every member of society through this programme, with this national rationalisation programme (Tarsheed), we focus more on the future generations.”
“We believe that the younger generation is the one that will lead the way in changing the current common practices and culture.”
Salah Al-Yafii explained the event was not only part of Aspire’s Leadership Development Programme (LDP) but also about educating our student-athletes.
“The objective of this event was to spread awareness among our student-athletes about rationalising how we use our natural resources,” he explained.
“We want them to take responsibility for taking care of the existing resources (water, electricity, and other natural resources), which they learnt through some games that we organised, as well as the valuable lecture presented by Tarsheed.”
“We (LDP) are also responsible for developing the student-athletes' leadership skills through playing games that helped them get the message of how to save resources.
“In the games we used, there was great collaboration between them, as well as problem-solving, thinking outside the box, fair play, and a high team spirit to reach the target.”
“I would like to thank Tarsheed for this great collaboration and we are looking forward to many others to come.”