Determined to support the interest of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education among young children, Pan-african digital payment company, Interswitch recently concluded the Interswitch/ Slum2school coding week activities at Adekunle Primary school, Makoko.
The week- long programme which is part of the company’s corporate social responsibility initiative took place at the renovated Interswitch lab centre; as well as the coming of volunteers from Interswitch, software developers to engage pupils on the rudiments of coding with special interest on how to create websites.
Enyioma Anaba, Group Head, Corporate Marketing, Interswitch, said the programme presented a CSR opportunity to inspire young people to better engage with, study STEM subjects and to also explore STEM careers.
Anaba, in the course of the Coding Week, said students were encouraged to adopt STEM education and its application, stating that its relevance in the real world cannot be overemphasized, as STEM has the power to transform lives and societies.
According to Anaba, “We took this initiative as a step to bring our developers to teach the pupils about coding and technology, because we realized that in the next 5 to 10 years, technology will be the new oil and frontier. So what we are doing is to start building that in the minds of these ones that as they grow up”.
She further said the company is running Interswitchspak 2.0 which basically is a programme to promote STEM among secondary school pupils. But we have also decided to bring into Makoko because we believe that this area is often neglected.
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Tiro Ovakporie, Head, Media and Communication, Slum2school Africa lauded Interswitch for renovating the STEM Lab, adding that the week-long event witnessed the coming together of volunteer from Interswitch, software developers to teach the pupils how to code specifically how to create websites.
Ovakporie stated that the 30 pupils who took part in the training were secondary school pupils from selected schools around Makoko, Yaba Lagos as they were the best 30 pupils that took part in a coding competition earlier in the year.
She observed that the one-week training opened the eyes of the pupils to technology and its benefits saying that we are living on a technologically driven society.
“The world has gone digital, pupils need to understand that in another decade or less, a lot of work will go extinct without technology infusion. The one-week coding training just opened the minds of the pupils that we are living in a technology-driven world and these are how things are done”, Ovakporie said.
She commended all Interswitch volunteers who took part in the exercise, adding that the Interswitch/slum2school partnership will advance and support quality STEM education in Nigeria.
