LEGO For Nepal Project to Introduce Students to STEM

LEGO for Nepal is a two-week long school exchange program for high school students organized by Volunteer Society Nepal in collaboration with the Edulent Foundation. The program is going to be held from 14^th April to 30^th April.

The Details:

• Nine team members from the Casimir Tech team will be coming to Kathmandu for the program. The Casimir Tech team are the First LEGO League (FLL) team from Eindhoven, The Netherlands. They will include high school students with teacher guidance. The team will be staying in groups of three with Nepalese families.
• They will work together with the students from Career Building International Academy (CBIA). They will be teaching the students about the FLL, building robots, and programming with hands-on projects with LEGO MINDSTORM robots. They will be working under the theme, “Global Awareness and sharing Knowledge”, and set up a new Nepali LEGO Challenge team.
• According to the organizers, the primary goal of the Lego for Nepal project is to introduce students in Nepal to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and hands-on-learning. They believe that youth robotics competitions and STEM programs (such as First LEGO League) are an excellent way of introducing children to problem-solving and other 21st century STEM skills.

The Backstory:

• Back in October 2017, 20 kids of CBIA school had a kick-off session for the FLL with the help of FLL team coaches Bhawani Sapkota and Zuhier Qureshi from San Francisco USA. They learned about the FLL and had a hands-on session with the LEGO mission challenge sets.
• In December they had another kick-off session in two local government schools and at the British school.

The Organizers:

• Volunteer Service in Nepal (VSN) is a Nepali non-profit, non-government organization (NGO), registered with the District Administration Office of Lalitpur and the Social Welfare Council in Nepal. They aim to provide sustainable assistance to disadvantaged socio-economic groups within Nepali communities, focusing primarily on women, children and young adults.
• The Edulent Foundation, based in The Netherlands supports individuals and groups, on a project basis for short and long-term projects. Its mission is to encourage children and young adults between the ages of 4 and 18 to come into contact with learning programs and activities in various fields, including but not limited to nature, science, technology, and societal issues.