The Zimbabwean team from Tynwald High School, which recently lost 6 students in a tragic accident, won the gold XPRIZE Innovator Award for developing an innovative solution to combat climate change at the 2022 FIRST Global Challenge competition held in Geneva, Switzerland.
President Mnangagwa has sent his heartfelt congratulations to the team, which exemplifies the new Zimbabwean stress on science and technology, coupled with innovation.
In a tweet, he said: “Zimbabwe’s future is bright! Congratulations to the Zimbabweans who won the gold medal in a (inter) national robotics competition in Switzerland, beating 183 other nations.
The young people of Zimbabwe continue to make the entire nation proud.”
Students from Tynwald High School represented Zimbabwe at the First Global Challenge 2022 in Geneva from Thursday last week to Sunday.
The team scooped the XPRIZE Innovator Award gold medal in this global competition which was established to promote science and technology, leadership and innovation in young people from all nations through the sport of robotics.
The Zimbabwean team’s innovation had a good solution for agriculture, cassava crop and removing plastics, in a way that helped fight global warming.
This event brought together students from more than 180 nations at PalExpo in Geneva for the FIRST Global Challenge, a high-profile, international robotics competition convening high-school-aged participants who work together to solve global challenges.
The event, launched in 2017 with backing from American innovator Dean Kamen, encourages young people from all corners of the globe to put their innovative skills to challenges that represent symbolic solutions to global problems.
This year’s theme is carbon capture, a nascent technology in which excess heat-trapping CO2 in the atmosphere is sucked out of the skies and sequestered, often underground, to help fight global warming. Or at least is removed from emissions from power stations and other sources before the flue gases are released.
“I’ve learned through FIRST that if we teach the world’s young people the common language of STEM, they’ll learn how to work together across cultural and religious differences,” said Dean Kamen, president of DEKA Research and Development and founder of FIRST and FIRST Global.
“Through the excitement of an Olympic-style sporting event, the FIRST Global Challenge is uniting students around the world to solve the greatest problems we face as a global community.”
This year’s games concluded with exciting final championship matches and an award ceremony, during which teams were awarded medals in several categories – both qualitative and quantitative in nature – highlighting the qualities that FIRST Global aims to inspire in the STEM leaders of tomorrow.
The Tynawld High School lost six learners and other 26 were left injured on Friday when their school bus overturned at the 75km peg along Rusape-Nyanga Road. – The Herald
