Background

 
The Hands Across Waters (HAW), turns water, sanitation and irrigation challenges and solutions into modern multidisciplinary education. The program, developed and operated by Hi-Teach, is run in association with the Israeli Water Authority, Water Companies, Utilities, Academia, Government (Education, Economy, Energy, Water, Environment) and the Rotary. The program is adopted in over 70 schools around the country growing continuously since 2007 with more than 16,000 graduating students. The program is supported by 40 Rotary clubs and districts, in Israel, USA, Canada, Eastern Europe and India.  It was granted three successive TRF (The Rotary Fund) Global Grants and was awarded a lucrative Note Worthy Project status.

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Program Goals

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1. Educate youth on local and global Water & Sanitation challenges and innovative solutions.

2. Promote global cross-cultural collaboration on the common water challenge.

3. Use ancient, current, and future water solutions as education content.

4. Empower science teachers with practical modern STEAM tools.

5. Develop awareness, involvement, leadership, and teamwork.

6. Inspire interest in study and practice of sustainable clean-tech.

7. Provide corporate stewardship and community involvement opportunity.

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Program outline
 

HAW is taught by the schoolteachers, as curricular water inspired STEAM with Hi-Teach e-content and guidance. It is adapted to many indoors and outdoors education formats and enables Problem Solving Project Based Learning (PBL), as well as Research and Reverse Engineering studies. The modular e-content provided on Moodle platform includes presentations, recorded talks, and virtual visits offering research topics and engineering challenges, suitable for 6 to 12 grades are presented.

The courses are supported by Hi-Teach coaches and industry experts with virtual and physical visits to current and ancient water facilities like irrigation, piping and leak prevention equipment, or desalination and wastewater treatment facilities.

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Ancient water sites provide a historical prospective on the evolution of technology, traditions, and culture and a broad science spectrum is addressed including Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Mathematics, Sustainability, Agriculture, Geography and more. Students develop practical and applicable solutions to the growing water challenges addressing various relevant aspects of the challenge including Economy, Regulation, Implementation, and the Law.

 

Project are presented in an international annual graduation event held virtually or the Technion on the Int’l water day, in collaboration