It is summertime! We love this time oif year because of all the exciting programs that we offer students to build their confidence and interest in pursuing STEM degrees. It is often stated that African students face formidable obstacles to learning, and acquiring knowledge and the skills that will make them “employable.” The rote memorization of information that is often outdated continues to be a significant limitation. In practical terms, one can easily observe this in action where attempts are made to teach students computer programming on paper, or where they are taught physics and chemistry without the benefit of conducting experiments in a lab! Their ability to query and validate their understanding is limited, as is their capacity to apply core theories and concepts to real-life situations.

Our STEM Summer Camp for Teenage Girls and Coding Boot Camp for Girls are designed to address this issue by providing students with the opportunity to engage in hands-on, practical activities. During our camps, students apply science, math, and engineering concepts to build robots, electronics, mechanical structures, and computer animations. They also learn to code by actually writing code directly into an editor to see whether it works! We additionally give them code with bugs for them to debug. This is a particularly effective learning tool. From past experience, we have found that their subsequent academic performance improves, while their confidence levels grow. We also use these programs to strengthen their public speaking, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills.

As President Ameenah Gurib-Fakim (President of Mauritius) recently said, “Africa must be a producer, not just a consumer of knowledge.” We are therefore empowering African students to see themselves as inventors and problem-solvers who can create innovations, new technology, drugs, vaccines, and a host of other products and services that add value to industry, commerce, health, the economy, and the overall quality of human life. When they experience risk-taking and experimentation, they realize their innate power to innovate and produce new knowledge.

The second quarter of 2016 has been quite eventful! We are pleased to partner with Ashesi University to invest in Africa’s future leaders. We are extremely proud of our 2014 Scholar, Omolara, who is set to graduate in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry with the highest honors (Magna Cum Laude or “First Class”). In this edition, she shares her experience as an intern in the chemical pathology lab of the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. We are equally pleased to have an A Team that makes the Visiola Foundation run smoothly.

Take a walk with us as we review our activities during the second quarter of the year.

Happy reading!

Ladé