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DIA students' exhibition focuses on challenges facing UAE society

DUBAI — Students of Dubai International Academy, the Emirates Hills located school, recently organised a unique exhibition that highlighted and addressed the challenges facing UAE society on multiple fronts from scarcity of water to global warming, welfare of construction workers to traffic congestion.

The students were divided into groups and were given six weeks to research, plan and put in place a special project in line with the "Local Matters Matter To Me" theme.

The key message they had to convey through their projects was that in spite of the astonishing developments in the UAE there were a number of grey areas that required urgent remedial action. One of the key activities undertaken by students as part of their research was field trips to labour camps, construction sites, The Palm-Jumeirah, Dubai Zoo, the Falcon Hospital and K9 Friends, the animal welfare group.

Alison Besselaar, Deputy Principal, Elementary School, said: “As DIA has an enquiry-based curriculum, such an exhibition helps children to celebrate how and what they learn and inquire. Children are required to learn by experiencing, through asking questions and by accessing the right kind of people for the answers. The best form of motivation is for them to actually present what they had learned instead of putting it all into a book and forgetting about it. It has helped boost their confidence because the children are given responsibility and ownership of the whole process.”

• UAE