Sultan Al-Sughair Saudi Gazette AL-KHOBAR — Some 7,000 teenagers in the Eastern Province have benefited from the iSpark program through a total of 140,000 enriching hours. iSpark was launched in January as an educational outreach program by iThra Youth in King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture, a Saudi Aramco initiative that aims to enrich 2 million Saudi youths by 2020. The program's manager, Shireen Abdulrahman, said taking the iSpark experience to the next level is intended to serve and reach out wider audiences of the Kingdom in world-class STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Science) training sessions. She asserts that iSpark has helped thousands of students in the Eastern Province so far. She said, "Due to the success of that program, the center has relaunched iSpark as iSpark Mobile, a program that will tour Saudi public and private schools.” At each school, four professional Saudi trainers conduct two sessions with different student groups. By the end of each week, 100 students are trained in two of four categories: Decoding Life, Powering the World, Green City or Bridges. She said iSpark Mobile began its scientific expedition in Al-Hasa as well as the western and northern regions of the Kingdom. The iThra initiative has been working toward achieving the main mission of the King Abdulaziz Center, which is working on shifting Saudi society to a knowledge-based society by providing educational opportunities that empower the youth.
