Young visionaries from eleven of Dominica’s secondary schools will compete on Monday, December 15th in the national finals of the 2014 Sagicor Visionaries Challenge being held at the National Stadium.
The school emerging victorious will represent Dominica at the S.T.E.M. Ambassador Programme coming in July 2015 in Tampa, Florida, where a regional Sagicor Visionaries Challenge winner will be chosen.
Dominican students have submitted 41 innovative projects to face the judges and these will be exhibited for public viewing on Monday at the National Stadium. The exhibition will be followed by a prize giving ceremony to be addressed by a representative of the Ministry of Education.
Students, teachers, parents and members of the public are invited to come out to support the young visionaries, and are being urged to do so by Vanessa Seraphine, the local science teacher who worked with Dominica’s inaugural Visionaries Challenge ambassador, Kendra Jean-Jacques.
Seraphine said being involved in the programme had been a great learning experience for the students and their teachers.
“The Sagicor Visionaries Challenge has proven to be a wonderful initiative. The students really learnt a lot from their involvement in it and so did their teachers. We learnt a lot of new things in areas like nano-technology and also while on tour of the Kennedy Space Centre. I was also able to return to Dominica to implement the vernier kit training which we received. All in all, the entire experience was very beneficial” Sepharine said.
Sepharine and Jean-Jacques in 2013 helped lead the team from the St. Martin Secondary School to the distinction of being the first local Sagicor Visionaries Challenge champion. Their project entitled Flushometer, was an eco-friendly way of effectively flushing the toilets at their school while experiencing low water pressure.
The Sagicor Visionaries Challenge was conceptualised by Sagicor and the Caribbean Science Foundation (CSF), in partnership with the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) and aims to promote the use of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) to develop effective, innovative and sustainable solutions to problems facing the region.
Oh what a smile, the future looks bright.
Reporter, please note that when one uses an acronym the explanation of what this stands for should be given right after or at the beginning of the reference.
I had to read right up to the end of the article to learn that S.T.E.M. stood for Science. Technology, Engineering and mathematic.s . And by the way, in case you want to say it or think it, I am not stupid or illiterate.
Well I am pleased to see the young persons of Dominica taking the right route