After a year and a half of experimentation with the aim of detecting the faintness and strength of her project, Rajab excels in establishing eco-friendly stones made of recycled glass, wood yard, and plastic for her first customer in May.
Rawan Rajab is a 21 years old Palestinian female who is originally from a village in Tulkarm. Rajab is a dedicated person who always seeks eco-friendly solutions that could tackle critical environmental problems emerging within her community.
“Climate change and other environmental problems are serious matters that must be recognized by community members. Therefore, I constantly ensure intensively read related articles to enrich my knowledge. Recently, I felt extremely shocked when recognizing that 99% of the waste in Palestine isn’t being recycled,” said Rawan. “Thus, when thinking about urgent key solutions, we can deduce that this massive waste could be used wisely to benefit the community and protect the environment before the problem escalates.”
Rajab is currently studying Design and Applied Arts in the Palestine Technical University, and while pursuing her education, she ensured to participate in “Her Success” program that aimed to empower Palestinian youth who are able to establish and develop pioneering productive projects with the goal of improving their skills and innovative abilities in parallel so they can eventually duplicate their competitive capabilities in the market place. And with the support of this program, Rajab was able to kick off her current project.
“During quarantine, I spent more hours every day on conducting intensive research bearing in mind that I have to implement my project afterward. Thus, I began to conduct multiple sample tests by collecting glass waste from around the house and the neighborhood, and after a specific period of time, I successfully launched my “Blue Stone” project to signify joy, leadership, innovation, and creativity. “
Throughout the implementation process, Rawan met various mechanical engineers and visited distinct factories. While some men were astonished to see a female asking them for products, she was keen to surpass any obstacle, whether financial or social, that could have stopped her from reaching the final results. Her dedication and goal-oriented vision helped her gain great support from the local community which brought real awareness to the people on how to utilize efficient tactics for waste management.
10 steps away from her house is the located workshop where she recycles the waste and creates the template from scratch along with different shades of colors for the stone. Rawan constantly strives to uplift her project by promoting it among people to integrate an eco-friendly stone in their homes with various shapes and colors.
“My other main objective behind this project is to open more job opportunities for youth in Palestine so they can mitigate high levels of unemployment among them,” mentioned Rajab.
Although the Israeli occupation is a detrimental factor for the project to grow and expand due to the shortage in supplies and tools they force on Rawan, yet Rajab unstoppably ensures to break the falsified image that the international community has created about Palestine.
“Our country is beautiful thus keeping it clean should always be a top priority for its residence. I hope this project becomes the major trigger behind establishing a recycling center in Palestine,” added Rajab.
For further information on Rajab’s work, you can the official page of “BLUE STONES”: https://www.facebook.com/BLUE-STONE-104542738386990