Formula Student team leader Osama approves the framework.
Students of Khan Younis Training College in the Gaza Strip work hard to design and build a racing car and put to the test at the Silverstone Circuitin theUK. Why would young people from a place like Gaza participate in Formula Student when there are so many urgent needs to address in the besieged poverty struck Gaza Strip? Sahar Mousa explains: “We need to tell everybody that we are a part of this world and we deserve our place in it.”
By Sahar Mousa
Can we make it or can’t we, It’s not a self-confidence issue and it’s not under estimating for our abilities, it’s simply that we don’t live in a place where dreams easily come true.
Here in Gaza, Palestine, where I live where the Palestinian Formula Team live our dream of participating and being a strong competitors in the UK Formula student competition had taken place and we started our working toward making this dream true.
We knew that it wouldn’t be easy to manufacture a racing car and funding such a project under the different challenges which have been created by the last war in Gaza.
Unfortunately we live under the siege and the needed parts to manufacture our car are not available inGazamarket, so we face a big deadlines problem.
Several contingency plans have been prepared by the business team to overcome this problem, we tried to utilize as much as we can from the available alternatives on the market. However the alternatives were costly and we exceed our budget for the car components, luckily we still had the opportunity to keep our self under the determined budget by minimizing the travel costs.
We have already raised 37,000$ and we planed to collect 70,000$. the component of the car cost us 30,000$ and we still need 33,000$ to meet traveling, shipping, and residential costs.
Osama –the leader of the technical team- told us –the formula student business team- that the team had almost finished manufacturing car but they are now still waiting for the rest of the parts to come fromItalywhich will finally arrive after all the problems that we faced to get these items.
The problem of Italian items:
We have decided to purchase items form several foreign companies to solve the scarcity problem; one of these companies was Fabrizo-Italy. We had communicated the Italian company and chose some items to purchase from there catalogues, then we sent them an order. However there was a problem in identifying where to deliver the items. For them, there is no where calledGazaCitythey know something called the Palestinian Authority. the Italian company has no relation withGaza; the nearest place to receive the items isIsraelor the Palestinian Authority-West Bank. We agreed to receive the items through Israeli cross point and the items where sent there, but the Israeli government had refused to let these parts entering the Gaza Strip and the parts were sent back toItaly. Thus our principle Dr. Ghassan Abu Orf was obligated to travel to Italy so he could bring the rest of parts.
Formula students in the workshop.
We are late, time is going on and we have a lot to do…you don’t have time to take a rest….you couldn’t back to home this night….that’s all what you could hear if you visit the Formula Student team these days….yes we have a lot to do, it will be a hard day full of work…the car should be done so we could make a strong campaign…we have to collect 30,000$ in one month Ohhh for heaven sake when this all will finish.
Before a couple of weeks we went to the college as usual, the technical team spent the previous night working on the car I remember their faces, they look very tired their eyes were red and it seems that they miss their beds. They were working all the night and they lose there energy; it was a hard night; one of the several nights that they have spent in the college working on the project.
Maybe you are asking yourself now why we do it? Is there a big prize for the winner? What if you didn’t win this competition?
Well, for us the Formula Student competition is more than a prize, its more than a competition to win, it’s not related to being famous or to get any material reward. when we think about the competition we think a bout Palestine, we think about the Palestinian people wherever they are, we think about a message we need to send for the world, we need to tell everybody that we are a part of this world and we deserve our place in this world, we are able to be active and Palestinian Youth are able to create, innovate, and compete. Yes we can make it, we are strong enough to do it, because it’s forPalestineand it’s for every Palestinian.
