25 Sep 2022

Speakers at the STEM innovative camp graduation ceremony Saturday, have highlighted the need for follow ups on participants to ensure that their dreams of innovation are kept alive.

They expressed their sentiments at the end of a four-day camp organised by Debswana Jwaneng mine, which was aimed at empowering 34 senior secondary school girls on concepts of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Participants were drawn from Matsha Community College in Kang, Seepapitso secondary school, Moshupa Secondary School and Lobatse Secondary School.

Botswana Innovation Hub Chief executive officer, Mr Tshepo Tsheko emphasised the need to participate in innovation as a nation.

“Innovation is everybody’s business and the critical component of innovation is the people, their ability to identify problems and solve them. Unlike what most people think, innovation is not about technology, but just a problem-solving process. Technology is just meant to make the process efficient,” he said.

He said Batswana had been innovative for many years even before the advancement of technology.

He said for innovation to succeed, there should be what he termed the three Ps: the Problem, People and Partnerships, adding that one should first identify the problem that was worth solving, which would prompt the need for people to come together and come up with ideas of how to solve it.

“Lastly, we need partnerships such as the ones we have now between Debswana, Dare to Dream and the schools in order to make the dream implementable,” he said.

He cautioned on overthinking ideas and said the best ideas were ones that were executed. 

“Do not be afraid to execute an idea, even if it fails because failing gives you a chance to work on it and improve it,” he said.

 Debswana Jwaneng mine corporate affairs manager, Ms Charity Thite said STEM was part of the company’s 2024 strategy of One Dream One Team.

“One of our intentions for the future is to leave an independent community post the mining period, and this programme falls under the sub-pillar of education and job creation of our corporate social responsibility initiative.

Under education we intend to stand with and support the girl-child and people living with disability,” she said.

She said that through the STEM project, Debswana was also hoping to improve results for completing classes in Jwaneng and its areas of influence.

“And because we do not have any senior secondary school in Jwaneng and our areas of influence, we decided to go to secondary schools that admit from our areas of influence and follow up schools girls around. This was our way of closing up the gap and ensuring that we assist the girls throughout their schooling, not just up to the junior school level,” she said.

Ms Thite said Debswana also took a decision to partner with Dare to Dream, which also had the same objective of empowering mostly the girl-child. 

She said during the period the learners were in camp, they organised various activities for them where speakers motivated them on various life skill topics such as financial literacy and planning.

For her part, Debswana senior information and technology manager, Ms Ludo Kenosi said continuity was key after such an event ,which called for follow-ups to ensure their innovation dream were kept alive. Ends