Guyana’s First Lady urges youths to embrace technology at robotics exhibition

First Lady, Mrs Sandra Granger, last Saturday attended the Second Annual Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Robotics Exhibition hosted by STEM Guyana in collaboration with the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GTT) Company. The event was held at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall on Homestretch Avenue.
The First Lady, in her remarks at the opening ceremony, emphasised the importance of STEM and expressed the hope of having robotic teams from every region in Guyana participating at this event next year. “If you want to be relevant in the 21st Century…you must become involved in STEM. You must embrace technology…because our lives are attuned to technology,” she said.
She also took the opportunity to congratulate the STEM Guyana Team for their hard work and on their tremendous success and said that she is confident that Guyana`s participation in the Global Robotics Championship, which is slated for Mexico in August, 2018, will see even greater success than last year. “I think we are in for great things…Our team had ten months of experience in robotics and place tenth out of 165 countries …So I expect much greater results,” she said.
Mrs Granger, last week, received a cheque on behalf of the STEM Guyana team to the value of G$500,000 as part of an instalment of a total pledge of G$6,000,000, from the Ministry of Public Telecommunications, to support Team Guyana’s preparations for the Global Robotics Championship.
Co-Founder of STEM Guyana, Ms Karen Abrams said the exhibition’s main objective is to motivate youths and help them to prepare for the future with the technological skills necessary to succeed “…We are trying to expose our young people in Guyana to technology and we want them to be able to get the jobs in time to come and to be ready for those jobs,” she said while noting that STEM Guyana intends to increase the number of robotics teams from 18 to 100 throughout the country, over the next year.
The exhibition also included an actual demonstration with a robot by Team Guyana’s members, Lego brick play stations for children under 10 years old, the STEM app booth, a booth by Starr Computers Incorporated as well as exhibits from STEM Robotics Teams and Schools.