En route to Dartmouth College for my Junior Year! As I sat through my class in France struggling to make sense of all these new French words I was been bombarded with, I zoned out and was caught up in a world of my own. All I could think of was my baby that was kicking and begging to be birthed in the next 2 months! I was scared because I felt inexperienced about this upcoming responsibility of taking care of it. Yet, I was full of hope ready to embrace a whole new life challenge nurturing it into a world icon. Those were the moments in my life where fear and faith coexisted in perfect equilibrium. I was bubbling with so many amazing ideas for it; ideas that kept me awake deep into the night. And then finally in the month of August, my baby - Project iSWEST 2014 got delivered! These past 2 months have been a GREAT learning experience for me planning and running our 4-Week innovation program, Project iSWEST 2014 along with other team members. The journey was not devoid of its own barrage of woes. There were days of power outages that rendered teaching some lessons impossible, and the period of food poisoning of over half the participants and facilitators (myself included) that really retarded our progress, among a myriad of other challenges. But even amidst all the challenges and struggles, the participating students still pursued arduously to achieve the goal at hand. There is just something about the zeal and passion of these students that gives me hope about Ghanas future and that of Africa at large. They worked deep into the night on their projects and sometimes slept in lab just to finish these projects in time for the Pitch Day. Some sacrificed other classes they had to attend while yet others moved this program up as the highest thing on their priority list. Eventually, they developed solutions to real life problems and presented the solutions along with their business plans! In fact, these high school students and graduates did in 2 weeks having access to limited resources and a team budget of GHS 200 (about $ 60) what Dartmouth Engineering students having access to state-of-the-art resources like 3D printers, laser cutters, mills, lathes etc and a team budget of $500 do in 6 weeks! One of my personal goals was to prove that Ghanaian high school students are as capable as everyone in any part of the world at developing innovative solutions to problems even amidst all the resource constraints. Concluding in his reflection essay on the program, one participant said All in all I will say I have been inspired to innovate to make an impact and I am very grateful to the Nsesa Foundation and I am grateful to have been part of a team of history making through Innovating Solutions with Science ,Engineering and Technology. His words unequivocally captures our motto Inspire! Innovate! Impact! We - Team Nsesa - shall not rest until we achieve our vision of creating what we call an Innovation Revolution in Ghana - a state in which young Ghanaians across the length and breadth of Ghana are developing disruptive innovative solutions to problems in their communities using Science, Engineering and Technology (SET). God bless our homeland Ghana! #NsesaFoundation #TeamNsesa #ProjectiSWEST2014
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 15:15:17 +0000