The Project

1-This bid addresses UN SDG 5: Alongside the disproportionate number of male students attracted to Engineering worldwide, Gaza is an area where gender roles are quite strictly differentiated. The flexibility of the Story Circles methodology will allow it to present questions addressing concerns and needs of female engineers within the host LMIC organization. It will also complement NU’s Athena Swan bronze application.

2-The bid addresses UN SDG 16: IUG is strongly committed to creating and maintaining social, economic and cultural links to the wider community in Gaza, and believes that enabling staff / students to communicate their ideas with each other and with the local / global community and develop critical thinking in relation to their projects is particularly likely to address issues of income, gender, religion and geography that currently greatly disadvantage inhabitants of the Strip.  NU staff involved are participants in varying sub-groups of the institution’s Decolonisation initiative, to which CUSP will contribute concretely.

3-The female engineers who participate in this program will augment the skills necessary to work globally, combining improved soft and technical capabilities, and all of the engineers involved will have had an opportunity to empathize, listen and communicate their ideas to each other and the local / global communities.

**Project lead: Ms Amani Al-Mgadma (IUG).

** Engineers: Professor Hatem Elaydi (IUG); Associate Professor Roger Penlington (NU). **Intercultural Educators: Dr Caroline Burns (NU); Dr Jane Carnaffan (NU); Dr Bill Guariento (NU): Drs Burns and Carnaffan.

Beyond the immediate project team, the staff and students in the project who will take the training on the story circle approach will benefit. The staff will have the chance to apply the new approach within her/his course teaching. This will have a multiplying effect on the students who will attend the subsequent story circle sessions, taught by the lecturers who have participated in the sessions.