I am an experienced K-12 educator dedicated to listening to students and helping them shape positive life paths. Our challenge in Lebanon is greatest in times of war and crisis. Students can lose hope as they face displacement, disconnection from school, and risk of recruitment into violent activities. I am passionate about putting my experience and skills to work for peace as a STEAM Instructor, Life Coach, Trainer of Trainers (ToT), and certified Generative AI & Microsoft Educator. As one antidote to the effects of violence on children, I created “STEAM for Peace” while participating in the Bridges to New Horizons program. My intention was for it to align with and become part of the broader Peactil initiative to build a peace education pipeline across school levels. 

STEAM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math, so the peace curriculum I created uses Minecraft Education to bring to life the Eight Pillars of Peace framework from the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP). The associated activities include building peace gardens inspired by the Eight Pillars.

My vision of STEAM for Peace is one of building peace literacy by developing critical thinking and digital capacities while enhancing youth’s sense of identity and leadership. This is achievable when we create safe spaces where students learn, have fun, play, and practice five core skills: knowing, doing, being, living together, and becoming. The result – positive citizen engagement.

When I joined the Bridges to New Horizons program, I was developing STEAM for Peace with a small core team. During the program journey, we expanded our effort by partnering with a tech company to provide Minecraft accounts and tech instruction for students who are 10 to 16 and affected by conflict. The teacher and student experience includes:

• Introduction of peace frameworks and concepts through dialogue and reflection

• Gamification, experiential learning, and design thinking that encourages youth to see themselves as empowered Peace Ambassadors using Minecraft Education to build and architect "Newtopia," a digital peace city where they practice citizenship and facilitate peer coaching sessions. 

• Use of tabletop gardens to plant wishes in the shape of a peace symbol and use Micro:bit sensors to design automatic irrigation systems. The creation of a "Smart Peace Garden" becomes a transformative experience as students collaborate on a presentation of their STEAM for Peace learning at a community STEAM Fair.

We moved fast with support of the Bridges to New Horizons leadership coach and project mentor - piloting at El Bireh School in Al-Dahie. We trained five teachers and 30 Peace Ambassadors, reaching 150 students and community members. The next step in the pilot was an engagement with Rosary Sisters School in Jbeil with 72 students in Grades 6 and 7. The school is one of 150 in a Schools of Citizenship network launched by Lebanon’s First Lady Nehmat Aoun. The STEAM for Peace vision is expansion to any public or private school looking to integrate peace education. Such a breadth of application will facilitate our ability to measure impact on the five core skills (above) and be a catalyst for youth peacebuilding in Lebanon.