Qatar’s National Debate Team in Slovenia

Qatar National Debate Team had an incredible performance in Slovenia from July 5^th-12^th.  Seven debaters attended a 5-day debate training followed by a 2 day tournament. 

Team Doha

Tammam Al-Ghraoui, Arwa Alsanosi, and Chantelle D’mello chose Doha as their team name and represented the city well as they won 5^th place.  Additionally, Chantelle was the 4^th best speaker at the tournament.

 

 

 

The Lawn Mowers

Mohammed Hubrack, Moiz Mohra, and Mohammed Al-Sabbagh chose The Lawn Mowers as their team name and certainly plowed over everyone else as they made it to the semi-finals and placed 4^th overall. 

 

 

 

Although Mera Al-Nalmi was too sick to compete on Saturday and Sunday, she worked hard during the training to improve her skills as a debater.  He brother, Hassaa even participated in the trainings and helped her with practice debates. 

 

Mera

 

 

It was quite an adventure as we left Qatar at 1:50 am on Sunday, woke up at 7 each morning and did not finish trainings until 9 pm.  Each student sudied incredibly hard, developed strong arguments, and practiced speech, after speech, after speech.  They are so excited about continuing to improve, they agreed to weekly practices at the QatarDebate offices beginning in August!  We did have some fun along the way, including a hike to the castle in Ljubljana (pictured above with three of the debate trainers) and a trip to the 4^th largest cave in the world in Postojna.  Please feel free to ask the students about their experiences, especially things like what they learned and how they can tell they improved.

QU Travels to Turkey

Four teams from QU are traveling to Turkey as this is typed.  They will participate in a 4 day tournament held in the World Universities Debate Style.  For more information, search “Istanbul Yeditepe Open 2009″ on Facebook and support the Qatar University students.  This small tournament is to help them prepare for the HUGE World University Debate Championship at the end of December/beginning of January this year.  Hopefully, this mini-tournament will allow these debaters to dominate the WUDC this year!  Good luck!

QU Debaters!

Qatar National Team Trials

Amazing Debaters!

On June 5th & 6th, QatarDebte held trials for it’s National Team.  Over 60 student participated from 16 schools around the country.  After a grueling day of proposition and rebuttal speeches, quizzes, and even written rebuttals.  The 60 students worked incredibly hard- even though many of them had exams to study for as well.  Everyone should be commended on their effort!  From those original 60 students, 24 were invited back on Saturday.  Those 24 students debated twice, had a small group interview and one final round of debates so that the judges could make their final recommendations.  After waiting breathlessly, QD announced the 8 students that make up Qatar’s National Debate team.  These 8 students will have incredibly opportunities both locally and internationally to receive specialized training and represent Qatar in various debate programs.  As WSDC (World Schools Debating Championship) gets closer, QD will chose 5 of these 8 students to particpate.  Congratulations to:

Dana Al Ansari

Chantelle D’mello

Arwa Alsanosi

Moiz Abid Bohra

Sara Al Shamlan

Tammam Al-Ghraoui

Mohammed Zuhair Hubrack

Sarah Salih

A Week Of Coaching!

Posing with Coaches Beth & James

From Sunday, May 25th through Thursday, May 28th QatarDebate hosted five incredible, international coaches.  These coaches spent the week leading workshops in 9 local schools and drop-in sessions in Education City.  Their vast knowledge of debate, strategy and activities helped many students improve their public speaking skills.   A HUGE thanks to Frederick Cowell, Kiera Healy, Beth James, James Molony, and Miranda Weigler!

Fatima debating against teachers

The week ended with a Student vs. Teacher Debate and Dinner at Qatar Foundation Head Quarters, co-sponsored by the Doha Center for Media Freedom.  The amazing Mrs. Naaz Hafiz from DPS Modern Indian School, Mr. Keith Heath from Michael Debakey School, and Mr. Salman Atassi from Qatar University, debated against the incredibly talented Dana from Park House, Sara from Park House, and Fatima from Al-Bayan Educational Complex.  The students as the opposition team won the motion THB that free speech in the media is absolute without restrictions.  It was a great night with lots of excellent ideas discussed about who places restrictions on the media and whether or not they are truly necessary.  Doesn’t the opposition team look great?

Qatar University’s First Annual Public Debate

In efforts to build their Debate Club, QU held it’s first annual public debate on Tuesday, May 19th with support from QatarDebate.  Over 100 students and professors attended.  Three students debated against three of their professors on the motion This house believes that QU should make Arabic the primary language of instruction.  Mirroring the Doha Debates, after the debate was over the audience asked questions and made comments.  Many excellent arguments presented included the idea that language effects your perspective on life verses the necessity of English in today’s global economy.  The motion passed with an audience vote of 64% in favor.  More importantly, students signed up to join the debate club and the girls will be starting one of their own as well!

If your school is interested in holding a public debate, with support from QatarDebate, please contact us at qatardebate@qf.org.qa.

“Everybody can make a change in the world. All you need to do is… care to try.”

On Thursday, May 14, ROTA held a beautiful reflection night at The Art Center in Souq Waqif.  There were elegant framed pictures, taken by Nigel Downes (www.nigeldownes.com), showing students presenting on stages and engaged in workshops during the 2 1/2 day conference.   A wonderful 3 minute QatarDebate video was shown, highlighting the excellent debate on Friday evening (see the previous post).   Students spoke on stage about their experiences at the conference.  Florent D’Souza summed it up perfectly:

ROTA has shown us the way to what we should do, but now the question is no longer what can we do, but why shuld we do these things?  Why should we care about our society?  Why should we care about others?  Why should we care about the environment?  This why is the reason I came to this conference.  It is the thing that keeps many people up at night.  It is because we all believe in one thing- a better world.  And we believe that we can change this world through love, compassion, innovation and above all the desire in our hearts.

These secondary and university students not only want to make a difference in the world, but ROTA gives them the tools to do so.  In fact, Sara Al Shamlan and her friends are starting a “Click It” campaign at their school to help students understand the importance of wearing seatbelts.  They will first do a survey to see how many students currently wear seatbelts and one again at the end of the campaign to see if they really did make a difference.  Maybe a new debate topic can be “This house believes there should be harsher punishments for not wearing a seatbelt.”  What do you think?

Posing after a night of recruiting!

Debate Kicks-Off Rota Conference

 

All 6 of the wonderful debaters!

ROTA  & QATARDEBATE TOGETHER ENLIGHTEN YOUTH IN EMPOWER ‘09

QatarDebate sponsored a televised inter-school debate, as part of Empower ’09, which was organized by Reach Out to Asia Qatar (ROTAQ) on 7^th May, Thursday between 7pm-9pm at the Qatar Foundation, HQ atrium. Empower ’09 was the first annual youth conference to mark the launch of ROTA’s new youth development program in Qatar.

The debating session was facilitated by QatarDebate and the 2 participating teams were

Doha Independent Secondary School for Boys (Mohammed K. Al-Sabbagh, Mohab K. Shado, Peter E. Antoun) and Park House (Ahmed Al Dweik, Dana Al-Ansari, Magellan Ezedien). The team from Park House School won the debate. The motion for the enlightening debate was This house believes that Qatarisation is the best way to ensure active citizenship for Qatar’s youths. Around 150 delegates had attended this event.

Dr. Hayat Maarafi, Executive Director of QatarDebate, says that QD took such an initiative to provide platform for young minds today to make use of their analytical and intellectual skills, by thinking radically on world critical issues and developing an attitude of acceptance, understanding and appreciation of each other’s intelligence, all of these qualities which are important to be good debaters today and great leaders tomorrow. EMOPOWER is primarily aimed at mobilizing and inspiring leadership and civic responsibility among Qatar’s youth, through service learning

Ms. Alberta Stevens, Head of ROTAQ, strongly believes in youth empowerment and was ecstatic about the success of the program as she felt the debate between an international and an independent school itself, reinforced their belief about the youth of Qatar, who she believes are definitely powerful catalysts for positive change.

The Director of ROTA, Ms. Omnia Nour, expressed much enthusiasm about this successful and unique opportunity, as she felt that by ROTAQ and QatarDebate working together, this event has dispelled existing myths and stereotypes. This success story sends out a powerful message to other Qatar Foundation centres about how 2 centres together can create scalable efforts and greater impact in terms of both leveraging of resources and maximizing effect. In her words, “Without QatarDebate, it would have been impossible to train the facilitators, moderators and the debaters to be leaders of this conference. The youth in Qatar have a true and real privilege to have their voices heard, through which they will affect national policies and gradually even international policies. We are proud to say that this successful collaboration between ROTAQ and QatarDebate echoes this belief and also aligns with the vision that Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Misned carries for Qatar.”

QatarDebate is very keen on future projects associated with ROTAQ as this successful and enriching debate session was only the beginning of such harmonious and rewarding collaborations.