Twen­ty-four stu­dents from Trinidad and To­ba­go have re­turned to school with brand new tech­nol­o­gy skills, af­ter par­tic­i­pat­ing with over 70 youth from five Caribbean coun­tries at IGT’s third vir­tu­al Cod­ing and Ro­bot­ics Rock! Camp.

The camp was held from Ju­ly 17 to Ju­ly 28 in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Mona Geoin­for­mat­ics In­sti­tute (MGI) at The UWI’s Mona Cam­pus.  As with past it­er­a­tions, this year’s camp was of­fered ex­clu­sive­ly to ben­e­fi­cia­ries of IGT’s ASA part­ner­ships with NGOs and com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions through­out the Caribbean.

In an of­fi­cial state­ment, IGT notes the 2023 co­hort in­clud­ed stu­dents from three of the 18 IGT’s Af­ter School Ad­van­tage (ASA) Cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go: Cre­do Boys De­vel­op­men­tal Cen­tre, Cre­do Sophia House and Cot­ton Tree Foun­da­tion.

IGT Trinidad and To­ba­go Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Dex­ter W. Thomas, notes that par­tic­i­pants were be­tween the ages of 11 and 18 years and joined the camp to un­der­stand and solve re­al-world prob­lems aligned with the Unit­ed Na­tions Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs) us­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

“Stu­dents col­lab­o­rat­ed on group projects cre­at­ing cap­ti­vat­ing web­sites and pe­ti­tions in sup­port of sev­er­al crit­i­cal SDGs that in­clud­ed Ze­ro Hunger, Life Be­low Wa­ter, Good Health and Well-Be­ing, Clean Wa­ter and San­i­ta­tion, Life On Land, Af­ford­able and Clean En­er­gy, and No Pover­ty,” Thomas ex­plains.  “This ap­proach aligned per­fect­ly with the camp's theme ‘Think it, Code it, Solve it’."

The IGT Cod­ing and Ro­bot­ics Rock! Camp is part of IGT’s Af­ter School Ad­van­tage (ASA) Pro­gramme, which is the com­pa­ny’s flag­ship com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive.  It is de­vot­ed to pro­vid­ing youth with ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy while pro­mot­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in dig­i­tal learn­ing cen­tres in com­mu­ni­ties where IGT op­er­ates.

IGT’s train­ing part­ner—the Mona GeoIn­for­mat­ics In­sti­tute (MGI) at The UWI’s Mona Cam­pus—de­liv­ered the camp con­cur­rent­ly to two learn­ing lev­els over 10 days in Ju­ly.

Dex­ter W. Thomas, says new stu­dents were in­tro­duced to the fun­da­men­tals of cod­ing and ro­bot­ics in Lev­el I, while re­turn­ing stu­dents from last year’s camp joined a more ad­vanced Lev­el II that built up­on the ba­sics and in­tro­duced AI.

“IGT aims to con­tin­u­al­ly en­hance the tech­no­log­i­cal aware­ness of the re­gion’s young peo­ple and pre­pare them to con­tribute to the so­cial and in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment of the Caribbean,” Thomas notes.

“Dur­ing the camp, young peo­ple from par­tic­i­pat­ing ASA Cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go were vir­tu­al­ly con­nect­ed with oth­ers from across five Caribbean coun­tries—Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica, Nevis, St. Maarten and USVI—all en­gaged in ac­tiv­i­ties at the same time mak­ing for a very rich tech­no­log­i­cal learn­ing ex­change,” he re­count­ed.

Feed­back from the camp showed that lo­cal stu­dents en­joyed this new ex­pe­ri­ence of work­ing with youth from oth­er Caribbean coun­tries to build tech­no­log­i­cal so­lu­tions for is­sues iden­ti­fied in the SDGs.

The SDGs were adopt­ed by the UN in 2015 as a uni­ver­sal call to ac­tion to end pover­ty, pro­tect the plan­et, and en­sure that by 2030 all peo­ple en­joy peace and pros­per­i­ty. Each stu­dent se­lect­ed an SDG that they want­ed to help solve and then worked with oth­ers in their group to code, con­duct re­search and col­lect im­ages to build a web­site that ed­u­cat­ed the pub­lic on their cho­sen top­ic.

Ac­cord­ing to one stu­dent from Cre­do Sophia House, the group project was one of the best parts of the camp be­cause she learnt how to care for the en­vi­ron­ment while al­so en­hanc­ing her cod­ing skills.

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IGT Trinidad and To­ba­go is the full-ser­vice lot­tery provider to the Na­tion­al Lot­ter­ies Con­trol Board (NL­CB), IGT man­ages the dis­tri­b­u­tion, ac­count­ing and val­i­da­tion of the Lot­tery’s in­stant tick­et busi­ness. In ad­di­tion to lot­tery and in­stant tick­et ser­vices, through VIA, a com­mer­cial ser­vices com­pa­ny, IGT pro­vides pre­paid mo­bile phone top-up and bill pay­ment ser­vices over lot­tery ter­mi­nals in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Af­ter School Ad­van­tage (ASA) Pro­gramme is IGT’s flag­ship com­mu­ni­ty ini­tia­tive, de­vot­ed to pro­vid­ing youth with ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy at dig­i­tal learn­ing cen­ters in com­mu­ni­ties where IGT op­er­ates.  Stu­dents are able to par­tic­i­pate in sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing and math (STEM) ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties while de­vel­op­ing the knowl­edge and skills for the jobs of to­mor­row. Since 2011, IGT and its sub­sidiaries have opened 40 ASA com­put­er labs across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean.