14-year-old Ofosuhene Apenteng wins GSTEP Ambassadors Challenge
14-year-old Ofosuhene Apenteng has emerged as the winner of the Ghana Science and Tech Explorer Challenge Prize (GSTEP) Ambassadors Challenge.
He wooed the panel of judges with his genius educational mobile app prototype, Access.
The app is targeted at helping students’ access educational materials in any field of study.
The pupil of Immaculate Santa Maria International School was one of the twenty-five ambassadors who successfully graduated.
One by one, each ambassador was given the opportunity to pitch their prototype projects that aim to tackle societal problems they have identified, to the judges.
The contestants were given 90 seconds to convince the panel of judges to invest in their projects.
At the end of the pitching exercise, Master Apenteng came out on top with his educational mobile app.
Jeremiah Ekpeh and Ivana Kwamin took second and third places, respectively.
Stephen Aboagye was also acknowledged for his water filter prototype.
Ofosuhene expressed his excitement about developing the mobile app and how it will benefit his community.
“The problem I identified in my society is that in my neighbourhood in Kumasi Afasiebon, the majority of kids or teens there do not spend their leisure time very productively, so I decided to create this app to help them learn,” he said.
Apenteng’s mother expressed how proud she is of her son and encouraged parents to help their children realise and nurture their potential and talents.
She said that, “parents should be very close to their wards, and we should know what they like or what they are passionate about.”
The GSTEP initiative is championed by the DreamOval Foundation.
It aims to provide junior high school students with practical science, technology, engineering, and math skills, and it has provided the ambassadors with skills that will help them tackle problems in their communities over the last year.
One of the GSTEP challenge partners and CEO of Foundervine, Izzy Obeng, expressed her excitement over the prospects of the initiative and called for a concerted effort to remove all barriers to stem education.
“We are trying to prepare them for the workplace of tomorrow. We want to prepare them for business, politics, engineering, and math, and so across the twelve months they’ve been doing public speaking, they’ve been really refining their presentation skills. They’ve been working on projects, and they’ve also been building the innovations they presented today,” she stated.
One of the judges and youth development coach, Kwame Nyatuame, stated that the creation of a conducive environment is key to unearthing the potential of the young ones.
“Ghana absolutely has a future. We simply need to be mindful of the environments we create for our children. Education is the catalyst for change. The sort of education that we give to children is what is going to make them,” he said.
Meanwhile, the GSTEP Exhibition and Awards Ceremony is slated for January 25, 2023, at the Accra International Conference Centre.
Source: Ghana News
