North Africa and Middle East Science centers network (NAMES)
Mission:
The goal of NAMES is the democratization of science throughout the region by enhancing the public understanding of and involvement in science by means of informal education.
Networking for a better future
There is a worldwide consensus that a sustainable culture of innovation will depend on more young people being interested in the future of science and technology. This interest must be nurtured and developed at a very early age through formal education in schools as well as informal education exemplified in science centers, children’s museums and science parks.
Science Centers and Museums are facilities dedicated to furthering the public awareness and understanding of science among increasingly diverse audiences; they encourage creativity and spark interest in the world around us.
For a science center to really achieve its goal of the democratization of science, it is obliged to follow the dynamic and ever-changing pace of science and technology. The most effective way to do so is through opening up to the fast developing world and cooperating with similar establishments regionally and internationally. It is for this reason that science centers networks were established all around the world. Some of the networks are: ASTC, ECSITE, Red-POP, ASPAC, SAASTEC, NCSM, and China.
NAMES was created to provide professional development for the science center field in North Africa and the Middle East region. NAMES aims to promote best practices, to support effective communication and to strengthen the position of science centers within the community at large. NAMES aspires to encourage excellence and innovation in informal science learning by serving and linking its members in the Middle East and North Africa and advancing their common goals.
The goals of NAMES are to be achieved through excellence and innovation in informal education and by offering hands-on activities where the public can indulge in participatory learning.
NAMES Founding Members are:
• The Planetarium Science Center, Egypt
• Turkey Science Centers Foundation
• The Scientific Center of Kuwait
• Tunis Science City
Please visit the Network's tentative website at: www.bibalex.org/namesnetwork
1st General Assembly Meeting Theme
The Role of Science Centers in Establishing Knowledge-Based Societies in the Region
"Between any stimulant and a response there is a range. Within that range lays our choice of decisions. In our decisions lie our futures. Our future is a matter of our decisions not our conditions." Stephen Covey
It is all about choice. The stimulus is the digital and knowledge divide between the developed and the developing countries, and the accelerating knowledge creation and application in the developed countries. We can choose to be observers, followers, partners, or leaders. Each choice has a different way to go and a different result and we all bear the responsibility for our choices.
If we choose not to be observers, we have to work on the development of our human element. Human development here means the comprehensive development of our human being, our young children. This should include their mental development and preparation to think, research, analyze, criticize, conclude and recommend. It should also include their physical development, their emotional development including affiliation with the society and being positive participants in societal development, and, finally, their spiritual development through the enjoyment of the sciences, the arts and life itself. Those who do not know how to enjoy life cannot add to it or improve it.
To proceed with the development of our human element we need to use our educational institutions whether schools, universities, or informal cultural and scientific centers, as locus of human impacting and of societal change.
To that end:
- We should learn from international and national experiences on how formal as well as informal educational institutions, and centers of excellence within these institutions, have succeeded in developing the human element on all education levels.
- We must address early formal as well as informal education because promoting inquiry and curiosity in early childhood is crucial. Parents should be brought on board together with the teachers and science communicators emphasizing that the process of active learning is a notion we must nurture.
- We have to focus on the knowledge of cultivating the intellect of the students and integrate, in a more complete manner, the teaching of science inside and outside schools.
- We have to develop the students’ capacity to work together rather than teach them as individuals because, eventually, they have to function within a community.
1st General Assembly Meeting Sub-Themes
Networking and Advocacy
Much advancement could be achieved by examining the existing best practices regionally and internationally; and identifying the need to manage knowledge as well as knowledge building; by analyzing current informal education centers and science capacity building institutions, which can be supported by pooling resources; by forming networks that can define what a center of excellence is and outline programs for training; by focusing on quality and efficiency in existing institutions, benchmarks can be set. Accordingly, a practical example can be followed and an optimistic approach adopted, thereby working towards closing the “hope gap”.
Effective and Non-Traditional Methods of Science Communication
"It is important that we as working scientists combat the myth of our profession as something superior and apart, for science can only be harmed on the long-run by a self-proclaimed separation as a priesthood guarding sacred rites called the ‘scientific method’. Indeed science is accessible to all thinking people because it applies universal tools of intellect to its distinctive material." Stephen Jay Gould
Working very closely with the media by involving them in science-related news, events and activities, thereby highlighting best practices, would prevent the alienation of the public from Science and Technology (S&T). As such, knowledge capacity building can be better marketed to the larger community.
While creating and generating more and better knowledge societies, forming networks and committing to the future, the urgent need to involve the young who hold that same future in their hands, surfaced. In concentrating on best practices, focus should be on formal and informal education at a very young age, thus, molding the future while it is still very young. There is a need to change the mindset of new generations and to improve their human condition by investing in their science capacity building and turning them into producers of knowledge rather than their current simple status as consumers of technology.