By Rama Dardari
The ITKAN + Ma'ruf Robotics Camp spent its final week making something small enough to carry home. The refugee students from the Ma'ruf community designed their own personalized keychains and 3D printed them, working from a step-by-step demonstration by ITKAN's mentors on how the printing process works. Each student left with a keepsake to remember their time at camp.
It was the same path they had followed on screen a week earlier. In the CAD session, most of the students had sat inside real design software for the first time, sketching and dimensioning parts in Onshape. The keychains gave that work its ending: an idea, a design, and then an object they could pick up.
Preparing for the last day meant going back to a favorite. The students revisited the maze runner, a LEGO robot they had built and programmed earlier in the program to make its way through a maze, so that they could share it with their families. They practiced together and helped one another, and were excited to show their parents everything they had been working on.
A showcase asks something different from a build session. Explaining a project is its own skill, separate from getting it to run, and it was the one the students grew into that week. Watching their confidence build as they talked through what they had made and demonstrated what they had learned was one of the highlights of the week. The day closed with certificates of completion for the ITKAN x Ma'ruf Summer Camp.
Four weeks earlier, 15 students from the Ma'ruf community had walked into the Innovation Hub, many of them meeting robotics for the very first time. Over the month they explored new STEM concepts, learned to use different technologies, solved challenges, and worked together as a team. More importantly, they built confidence in themselves and discovered that learning can be creative, hands-on, and fun. The final showcase was a way to celebrate not only the projects but the growth, the friendships, and the memories made across an unforgettable month of camp.
