Today (June 16), will see the launch, in Cape Town, of the first private sector space programme for girls and young women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) – a first in South Africa and in Africa.
Today (June 16), will see the launch, in Cape Town, of the first private sector space programme for girls and young women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) – a first in South Africa and in Africa.
The culmination of this project is the actual launch of Africa¹s first private satellite carrying technology built and programmed by South African female school children.
The satellite has already been purchased and is scheduled on the international launch manifest for the small satellite MEDOsat1 in mid 2016.
The project has been initiated by The Meta Economic Development Organisation (MEDO) which organises funding for economic development programmes.
Having worked with both corporates and government, MEDO has seen first-hand how the severe lack of technical, mathematical and science skills are impacting on business in this country.
Adding to the problem is the fact that children – especially girls – are not pursuing careers in STEM.
MEDO have devised and raised sponsorship for their Young Women in STEM programme to try, as they say, to reverse the lingering legacy of apartheid, which excluded maths and science from the curriculum of non-white children.
Today’s children are not brought up in technically passionate households and the number of technical degree applicants is decreasing year-on-year.
They are collaborating on the STEM programme with Morehead State University in Kentucky, USA.
It focuses on young women in high school and will result in the same young women designing and building the payload to be launched in 2016.
The programme will consist of workshops in electronics, the basics of practical science, robot building, conducting experiments and testing the equipment participants design using high-altitude weather balloons.
The intention is that the programme is not a once-off, but the start of a decade-long drive to inspire young people to enter the science and technical fields.
