This after a successful second staging of the IGT Coding and Robotics Rock! Camp for its After School Advantage (ASA) beneficiaries.

Brendan Hames, Regional Director IGT– Caribbean says the program aims to meet these additional requests as best as possible, in continuing the programme which caters exclusively to students within IGT ASA Centres across the Caribbean – many of whom are either in state care (children’s home or place of safety) or are otherwise disadvantaged youth.

“The response to our introductory Level 1 training in 2021 was overwhelmingly positive. With the addition of the more advanced Level 2 component and focus on regional sustainability, there was an even greater demand for enrolment from our ASA student groups across the region,” Hames.

Over 60 youth from IGT ASA Centres in Antigua and Barbuda; Barbados; Jamaica; St. Kitts and Nevis; St. Maarten; and Trinidad and Tobago participated in this year’s camp. 

Antigua and Barbuda were new to the list of participating islands for this year’s staging of the camp.

The Mona GeoInformatics Institute (MGI) at the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona Campus designed the course and delivered the training, received curriculum development guidance from Nalini Ramsawak-Jodha, Education Specialist and Lecturer from the School of Education at the UWI, St. Augustine Campus.

The camp culminated in late August with more than 30 students completing introductory level training and over 30 additional students receiving intermediate training at Level 2 for the first time.

Participants have indicated that this year’s camp taught them useful skills and broadened their horizons in terms of future career options.

In the post-camp evaluations, students identified a wide range of future endeavors that the experience had ignited in them, everything from e-commerce stores to gaming and game design to cybersecurity. 

“Overall, it was a pleasant experience,” stated Joshua Langford, a Level Two participant from the IGT ASA Centre at Island Academy. 

“For our final project, we worked on a picture slider of our country which gave us a lot of basic experience in coding that we can use in the future to improve our regions technologically.”.

The participating supervisors affirmed the high level of engagement among the students and had high praise for the MGI instructor team as well as Education Specialist, Nalini Ramsawak-Jodha.