Stabroek Business has learnt that the national teams being prepared for two forthcoming major international robotics events in Dubai and South Korea are to receive valuable technical help in their preparation from ExxonMobil, as STEM Guyana, the local entity behind the building of a technology base at the level of young Guyanese, continues to work with public and private sector agencies to ensure Guyana’s participation in the events.
Earlier this week, STEM Guyana co-founder Karen Abrams told Stabroek Business that arising out of discussions between the organization and ExxonMobil, an understanding had been reached that the company now gearing to deliver Guyana’s ‘first oil’ early next year will offer “technical help” in the preparation of robots for the forthcoming competitions. “ExxonMobil has committed engineering volunteers to the team in terms of the building of a solid 2019 machine (and this is) promising,” Abrams told Stabroek Business.
Describing the development as a “major breakthrough” for STEM Guyana’s “efforts to reach out for support to both the public and private sectors,” ahead of the two international events, Abrams, while not entering into the details of the specific ways in which the technical help from the American oil company will be forthcoming told the Stabroek Business that the organization will be seeking to “use ExxonMobil‘s support to build on Guyana’s achievement in the 2017 international robotics competition in Washington, where the country’s first ever team in such a tournament placed tenth.
And according to Abrams the gesture by ExxonMobil was reflective of “just the kind of public/private sector collaboration that is needed for STEM Guyana to make a mark. When something like this happens it tells us that our work is attracting worthwhile attention and that we are going someplace,” Abrams said.
Abrams says, meanwhile, that garnering all of the requisite resources to enable teams to be in both Dubai and South Korea is still a work in progress. “We have had some help from government and from other sources but, frankly, we are still some distance away from the target that we need to meet if we are to be part of both events,” Abrams said.
Dubai is scheduled to host the first Global Robotics Challenge in October this year while South Korea will also be hosting a Youth competition in October. Guyana is seeking to field teams at both events.
Abrams told Stabroek Business that while STEM Guyana’s aim of participating in both competitions might seems overly ambitious, the organization believes that it is a positive step. “We need to understand that one of STEM Guyana’s critical missions is to keep Guyana in step with the world of global technology. What we are seeking to do is to provide exposure for those youngsters who, down the road, could be at the forefront of STEM technology pursuits that have to do with the broader development of Guyana,” Abrams says.
And according to the organization’s co-founder, STEM Guyana’s ultimate ambition of contributing to significantly raising the level of national awareness of the global shift in the education curriculum in order to position Guyana to function effectively in the technological age can succeed “beyond our wildest expectations” if there is a collective appreciation of the value of what the organization is seeking to do.
“Essentially, our objective is to help prepare Guyana for a future which, sooner rather than later, our country will have to face. We do not see the support of the state and private sectors and the diaspora for our work as a charitable gesture. We see it as a duty on their part, an investment, if you will, in the future of Guyana.”
And according to Abrams members of Guyana’s 2017 & 2018 robotics national teams have been “serving Guyana well” by contributing to outreach initiatives in far-flung communities and in managing STEM clubs across nine of Guyana’s ten administrative regions.
STEM Guyana, in association with public and private partners like the Department of Youth, has set itself a goal of engaging and teaching robotics and coding to students from more than 100 STEM clubs in all regions of Guyana by December of 2019 and past robotics teams have played an integral role in the achievement of that mission. It is an ambitious undertaking, especially for a three-year-old organization with no solid funding, or stable secretariat, but optimism also seems to meet accomplishments when STEMGuyana is involved.
During the 2019 August holidays, the organization has set itself a target of organizing ten STEM camps, training and hiring more than twenty interns, participating in website development training in five of the country’s administrative regions and facilitating the successful test and launch of its mobile app.
“What we are currently engaged in is a ten to twenty-year investment in the children of Guyana,” Abrams says.
