Young Engineers Movement Hackathon opens doors to future career choices
Grades 7 to 9 learners explored STEM career choices and skills at ORT South Africa's Young Engineers Movement Hackathon.
55 learners put ideas to paper, developing prototypes at the Young Engineers Movement (YEM) Hackathon.
The ideas they came up with at the five-day hackathon in Houghton Estate, hosted by ORT South Africa, were to solve leading community issues, bringing together teams of learners from schools across Gauteng to delve into coding, engineering, robotics, and design.
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Anele Mkungela , head of the department of Stem and IT Academy, said the initiative was introduced to expose grades 7, 8, and 9 learners to engineering and technology, so that they make sensible career choices in the future.
“The reason why we started this initiative is because of a call we received from the department of basic education, in terms of the general education and training (GET) phase, which is the grades 7, 8, and 9 learners needing exposure in careers such as engineering and technology.”
He explained that the programme aims to help learners acquire engineering and technology skills to broaden their options when the time comes to choose subjects.
Among the participants was Grade 9 learner Thokozani Mkhwanazi, from Mbongeni Mgududu Secondary School, whose team was creating a prototype that will help communities access water during municipal water outages.
“The community often experiences water outages, so my team and I decided to create a prototype that can help the community gain access to water even during municipal water outages.” Mkhwanazi said he hopes the experience will sharpen his coding skills, help him learn from his mistakes, and do better in the future.
Description: Photo: Thato Modopi
Teachers accompanying learners believe the programme could help them in choosing future subjects and career choices. Lloyd Vilakazi, teacher at Curtis Nkondo School of Specialisation, said the hackathon is a huge opportunity for learners.
“I think they will have an idea of what engineering looks like, and then choose engineering because of this experience.”
Participating schools included Mega Primary School, Mbongeni Mgugudu Secondary School, Dulcie September Primary School, Michael Mkwanazi Primary School, and Curtis Nkondo School of Specialisation, among others.
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