By Anood Hamzeh & Shade Shalak
UNIVERSITY CITY, SHARJAH – Fatima Bint Hazza Cultural Foundation Executive Director Maysoon Barber discussed an education initiative that would help in times of flooding in Bangladesh at the American University of Sharjah, on Nov. 17.
“We decided to focus on a certain context: To provide education to the youth in Bangladesh,” said Barber at the event held at Sheraa, AUS Library Building.
The foundation challenged architecture students from AUS and two other leading universities to design schools that would not suffer in case of flooding.
The foundation asked the students to research and come up with design-thinking solutions to approach the situation holistically.
“It’s not easy to visualize the situation in Bangladesh, let alone come up with a solution. So that was part of the approach, students had to engage with a local NGO and research on their own regarding the landscape of Bangladesh to propose solutions,” added Barber.
Barber said that they are not providing proposals to be implemented immediately. “The people in Bangladesh have had their share of trial and error. They just don’t have the luxury to back up their ideas. So, what we do is we offer our proposals as a contribution.”
“All the proposals shared one thing … designs with the community at heart,” she added.
