Engineering community reach out to primary school
The Namibian Society of Engineers (NASE) held its third Annual Engineering Community Service Day at the end of April and describe the event as a resounding success.Engineering Community Service Day is a countrywide community-centred drive under the auspices of NASE and its social responsibility arm, Engineers Without Borders Namibia (EWB-NA), which seeks to pool technical resources and expertise together to address specific challenges facing communities, using engineering skills and at no cost to the beneficiary community.
This year’s main event was held at Namutoni Primary School in Katutura where the Secretary-General of NASE and Administrator of EWB-NA, Rachel Amoomo, led a team of engineers, technicians and artisans from around Windhoek, including students and staff of the Windhoek Vocational Training Centre, to assist the school with its immediate infrastructural and aesthetic needs.
The assistance rendered to the school was done with permission from the Ministry of Education as required and involved the installation of a shade net between grades 1 and 3 classrooms; constructing and painting benches for the learners and staff using readily available material such as pallets and tyres; fixing and improving existing tippy taps, cisterns, school laboratory roof, as well as edulution of classroom roof and ceilings, ablution facilities and gate rails.
The work carried out also included the painting and improvement of projector screens on walls, netball field lines and poles, library wall and soup kitchen benches and burglar door, along with artistic wall drawings of the SADC and Namibian map showing all 14 regions, and the outside wall of the pre-primary classrooms.
STEM
The above works were followed by a session of lessons and demonstrations given to the learners on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), which included a real-time demonstration of the development, launch and use of drones by the NASE president. All of the work has brought a new and fresh look to the school, which creates a motivating and friendly learning and working environment for learners and teachers.
NASE’s desire is to see all Namibian schools countrywide benefiting from similar initiatives.
The Society, through EWB-NA, is committed to deploying its readily and abundantly available technical expertise towards the improvement and upliftment of the spaces we inhabit and creating a better and brighter future for our communities, for generations to come.
“Volunteerism, as one of our core values, transcends the challenges we all face. We invite and encourage more people, including organisations and the government, to join our next community service drive so that together we can achieve even more and inch our efforts closer to where future generations of Namibians would expect them to have been in the quest to create a better world for our communities,” said NASE president, Charles Mukwaso.