Debate Club

The school is part of two debate leagues in Qatar. The first league if the QSDL (Qatar Schools Debate League) which is a segregated debate system. The school successfully runs a Junior Debate Team which is open for students between Yrs. 7-9 and a Senior Debate Team for students between Yrs. 10-12. The purpose of the club is to raise public-speaking skills through use of argument, rebuttal and evidence. It goes without saying that these skills will most definitely improve our students’ English skills, vital skills where everyone has English predominately as a second language. The second league is the DSQ (Debate Schools of Qatar) which is a Junior Girls Debate team which is a mixed debate format run by international schools.

World Scholars Cup

The World Scholar’s Cup is an annual competition that is held in Doha to motivate students of all backgrounds to discover new strengths and practice new skills. It is also intended to inspire a global community of future scholars and leaders. This year the theme of the competition was An Imperfect World which saw our students compete in a live quiz round, a team debate and competition writing. It was a hectic two days but well worth it as Al Jazeera Academy walked off with 26 medals but more importantly 8 of our teams qualified for the global round in Bangkok. This is the second year at World Scholars Cup but we are growing and hope to enter in more teams in the next academic year.

Humanities Symposium

The Symposium was the brainchild of Rodha in Yr 12 and Nawal in Yr 12 in bringing inspirational speakers to the school to raise awareness of contemporary business and social enterprise. To date we have had three speakers in the school and our target by the end of the year is five.

Speaker One - 21/10/2015 Our first speaker Maqdeem, a young abaya fashion designer had the girls enthralled by her vision to create a diffusion line of abayas. In Qatar the traditional colour is black but Maqdeem has brought new colours into the fray by encouraging younger customers to embrace these new colours. The rise in social media has allowed entrepreneurs to reach out to new markets and Maqdeem gave the girls unique insights in how to digitalise their business content and reach specific market segments.

Speaker Two – 20/03/2016 Our second speaker Lujain Al-Ubaid is an educated Saudi women who inspired the girls with her charity Tasamy. Studying finance at university and participating in the Harvard's Woman Executive Program, in addition to attending the Columbia Business School's Executive Education program, it may not come as a shock that at the ripe old age of 22, Lujain Al-Ubaid became a co-founder and CEO to a non-profit organization called 'Tasamy'. Tasamy primarily focuses on finding sustainable solutions to social problems by encouraging and empowering youth, leaders, private and governmental institutions to achieve social entrepreneurship in the gulf region.

Speaker Three – 04/04/2016 Our third speaker Danie Boneschans is a South African teacher who spoke to the Year 10 and 11 History students about the difficulties in South Africa in bringing back Afrikaan as the second medium language. Danie explained the struggles that the black community faced during apartheid and the challenges that the country had to go through in bringing these communities together. Danie also explored the media’s contribution during these years and how technology advanced the cause for the Black community. Danie finished by speaking of Ubuntu which roughly translates as human kindness which is a philosophy being encouraged in South Africa to help the nation move forward from its tainted past.