| Hakim Hayat | A GROUP of local secondary school students hopes to ignite the passion of more young Bruneians in science and technology leadership and innovation through their participation in the inaugural robotics challenge for high school students worldwide organised by First Global in Washington DC, United States next week.
First Global also strives to convince the various national governments and organisations of the world to embrace STEM education, and to support it by investing in their young adults that will soon begin to make their marks in the world.
She hopes that by assembling and mentoring the young Bruneian robotics team to participate in the competition, it will pave way for more awareness on robotics sciences among young Bruneian students and ignite more interest among them, as she feels that its development in the country is often not well known of.
“We want this to be a start to cultivate more awareness on robotics among Bruneian students, to inculcate the mindset earlier among them and from their participation, we want to keep this going by conducting sharing sessions with other schools and we want this to be an annual participation from Brunei,” she said.
These alliances are tasked with accomplishing engineering tasks such as the storing of drinkable water, filtering of contaminated water, and procuring of new sources water.
In a laboratory up stream, the villagers come together to research the contaminants and ultimately create a purification system so contaminants are removed before they reach the villages, thus providing clean water for all.
“It didn’t come without any challenge but it was pretty smooth overall and right now we are just finalising the product and hopefully we will finish it by this week,” she said.
Another team member, Syasya Jamain, 15, from Jerudong International School said the journey benefited all of them because they weren’t all too familiar with the world of robotics at first.
“Through this we learnt the importance of it and how it really benefits a lot of people and how we can help contribute to society,” she said.
They also mentioned that interest about robotics in their school is very limited and people rarely talk about it but hopes that with their participation they hope to widen the understanding and make people know the importance of this technology and how it exists and will continue to grow for the future.