HMOF created a partnership with Turkey’s Bilim Kahramanları Derneği (BKD/Science Heroes Association) for Science Heroes Projects and has supported the participation of the teams from girls’ dormitories for FLL Tournaments.
The program has been implemented in Turkey since 2004 under the name of Bilim Kahramanları Buluşuyor (Science Heroes Meet). This tournament is for children and young adults aged between 9 – 16 from 110 countries. Participation allows the participants to feel like they are real life scientists and engineers.
128 girls from 12 dormitories in 6 years have participated the tournaments with the support of the Foundation.
The Aim of the Project:
Improvement in communication, listening, self-expression skills with their peers, parents and teachers
Improvement in presentation skill, time management, empathy, sharing, searching and questioning skills
Increase in self-confident
Increase in mutual confidence between the peers and different generations.
Increase in awareness regarding the theme of the year.
Improvement in team work and socializing skills.
Creating a perception of science becoming a tool which is enjoying, easily reachable and which improves the quality of life.
Raising awareness in the importance of the process rather than the result.
17 teams participated in the tournaments.
11 prizes were won.
Two teams gained the right for participating in the National Tournaments.
The skills that the students gained after “Science Heroes Meet” tournament are listed below:
Increase in self-confidence
Doing scientific research and having fun while learning science
Listening skills
Expressing yourself properly
Capable of being a team and acting as a group
Working with self-discipline
Taking responsibilities
Problem solving
Capable of doing presentation in front of the jury
Being an open-minded person
Improvement in mathematical, visual intelligence and algorithmic thinking skills via robot designing.
«We were not aware of the damage we cause to nature. Our point of view on this completely changed. We faced with the fact that we should consider our life and the earth we live in while making decisions. The tournament made us more sensitive towards the environment.»
«The tournament changed our view of life. Firstly, we saw that there are many problems of which we were not aware in our lives. We also learnt the method of reaching the solution step by step instead of overrating the problems.»
«I would like to be an Engineer. I realized with this project that I enjoy robot designing and software development so much.»
«I experienced different feelings during the tournament such as sadness, joy, excitement, wonder… This is great. Especially the sense of wonder: Now I would like to learn everything.»
«I like teamwork. Because all team members respect their opinions of one another.»