WomEng steers girls in engineering

News   Chapter Banda   January 28, 2019
PIC: Some of the students showcasing their prototype
The Women in Engineering in Malawi conducted a one-week outreach program for the primary and secondary school girls.

The aim is to increase the number of female Engineers in the country and globally as there are only 5% and 11% respectively.

 This was done by motivating, inspiring and briefing the students more about engineering programs in order to encourage them to pursue one of the programs at any University in the world.

The program which ran from 14th up to 19th January, 2019 attracted a lot of key stakeholders including the academia and the corporate world.

During the event, each female engineer explained about her profession to the students who were inspired to be part of female engineers in the future.

The students were given an opportunity to showcase their prototypes by using simple tools that were brought and provided by Society of Women Engineers (SWE).

According to the WomEng Malawi Chapter project coordinator, Faith Mzandu the students were grouped into various groups in order for them to do a science project tailored to engineering.

“For instance, we gave the students in their respectively groups a task to make a structure or tower. In which the product was measured in two ways. Firstly, we measured   a height and the group that had a tallest tower or structure earned more points. Secondly, we also placed the tower on an earthquake prototype. Therefore, the reason behind that was to see if their towers would stand during an earthquake,” she explained.

She further added that the towers were also measured against different strengths of an earthquake, from a minor to a very strong earthquake.

“The whole idea, we wanted the students to develop the towers was to show them the practical aspects of engineering .In addition, the reason behind that was to make sure that the structures we build are safe for the people who will use and live in them,” she added.

A third year Biomedical Engineering student at the Polytechnic who also attended the outreach ,Daisy Manyenje said the outreach programs organized by WomEng Malawi are truly not done in vain as they are inspiring young ladies from all over the country to believe in themselves .

The outreach was conducted in various secondary schools and a primary school in the southern region.

The WomEng Malawi visited Michiru view girls secondary school, Gremah secondary school, and two community day secondary schools from Chiradzulu and Blantyre Baptist primary school.

The WomEng Malawi consists of the corporate world, the students who are studying engineering programs, female engineering lecturers from both MUST and the Polytechnic.


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