Written by Our African members Amira Nasser and Gamil Gamal represented the YESS Community in the TROP-ICSU workshop, which was held in Cairo (Egypt). Here you have their experience:
We attended the Faculty Development Program Workshop on ‘Climate Across the Curriculum: Educational Resources for Teachers‘, organized by the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT), in collaboration with the TROP-ICSU, on 15th-16th April 2019 in Cairo.
Slightly over 100 participants comprising of lecturers and research assistants from Cairo and other cities of Egypt attended the workshop with me and Dr. Gamil Gamal.
At day 1, we were introduced to the workshop programme and participants first thing in the morning, then we were introduced to the TROP-ICSU project. In the rest of the morning session, we listened to two demonstrations on the digital teaching tools and lesson plans that integrate climate topics with core curriculum. After lunch break, we were involved in group activities on reviewing the discipline-specific teaching tools and lesson plans developed by TROP-ICSU team and previous participants.
At day 2, Gamil presented on the climate of Egypt, the climate-related research conducted by his Faculty (The Faculty of African Postgraduate Studies, Cairo University) and some sources of climate data that can be shared with the researchers and teachers from other disciplines to use them for developing teaching tools and lesson plans. Also, Amira gave a talk on the YESS Community in order to let the participants know about it, what it can offer them, how it contributes as a partner with TROP-ICSU, and how they can join it. After the lunch break, we were engaged in another group activity to develop lesson plans in different disciplines and the participants presented their developed lesson plans at the end of the workshop.
It was an enriching experience for me to participate in such a unique workshop, where climatologists and researchers from many diverse disciplines met for one of the very seldom times to share knowledge and experience. We find the TROP-ICSU project to be an excellent project as it helps teachers to incorporate climate- and climate-change-related subjects into the undergraduates’ and graduates’ curriculums to help developing a future generation of researchers of different disciplines who has enough knowledge about climate and climate change hazards to participate in climate change risk mitigation strategies and building a climate-resilient community.