STEM Education through Basketball

Dear Friends,

On February 7-8, 2020, The Manengouba Foundation hosted its annual Basketball Camp and STEM Expo in the town of Nkongsamba, Cameroon. The event, which was held in collaboration with the College Socka Bongué, was organized as part of Cameroon National Youth Festival.

Since the start of the new year, our local volunteers’ team has been on the ground planning and preparing to ensure the success of this event, the first of its kind in this rural community. The participants themselves resurfaced the outdated basketball field, installed the hoops and cleared the surrounding area.

At 8:00 am on February 7^th, the festivities kicked off with coaches, parents and nearly 100 kids, including delegations from the surrounding regions of Melong, Bafang, Douala, Loum. This record turnout was up from the 60 participants from the previous year. After breakfast was served to all participants, the event started with the singing of the national anthem, followed by a welcome speech from the principal of the College Socka Bongué.

STEM Expo

Held in conjunction with Cameroon Bilingualism Day, the theme of this year’s STEM Expo was “Bilingualism: An Invaluable Bridge to National Unity, foundation for a peaceful and emergent Cameroon.” 

At 11:30 am, visitors were able to visit various STEM workshops around campus that explored various fields of study. Under the leadership of school faculty, student presenters worked for weeks in advance to research, test and complete projects in order to give detailed explanations on how they successfully realized their projects.

The first group presented on how to incubate eggs using energy. The second group presented project based on biodiversity and how to rear rats in the house. The third group demonstrated how to test if someone has Syphilis or Diabetes. The fourth group came up with a model to construct a modern house. They also realized a project on how to construct a modern bridge using environmental materials. The fifth group focused on how to build a chair using plastic bottles and a modern chair itself with wood materials. The last two groups respectively presented the fabrication of a homemade barbecue grill and a fridge functions using electricity. All presentations were well appreciated by the public who came to see the event.

Basketball Camp

As the STEM exhibitions were in progress, the basketball camp was also taking place on the playground. It started with the presentation of the various teams and their coaches. There was a word from the school principal, Mrs. Helene Epane and our guest speaker, FIBA basketball expert, Mr. Alexis Siewe.

Although the STEM Exhibits only took place on the first day, the basketball camp went for two days. Day two (2) started at 7:30am with the gathering of the entire group to have a word with our experts in FIBA basketball. This was followed by breakfast, basic basketball skill lessons, and game competitions. All teams were evaluated and participants were grouped on teams. Participants from Douala faced those from Nkongsamba and those from Melong played with those from Bafang and so on.

All attendees took advantage of these two days full of basketball activities combined with the STEM projects exhibition. At the end, tee shirts and Certificates of Achievement were awarded to all participants. A family photo concluded the end of the event and the organizers offered a small feast. The participants returned safely to their respective homes of record. 

Since January 2019, nearly 200 boys and girls have benefitted from our S.T.E.M Education through basketball initiative so far. During our first annual basket-ball camp in August, 60 participants, which includes 21% of girls, immersed in the fundamentals of basketball, teamwork and perseverance. Since then, we gathered 140 additional participants and introduced them to S.T.E.M concept and technical aptitudes.

Meeting and Educational Discussion

This quarter, the focus was to introduce participants with the scientific category of S.T.E.M programs in which some of them were familiar with, including biology, ecology, chemistry and physics. However, we realized that the S.T.E.M science course was not the kind of science class some of them remembered. Throughout several meeting organized between guess speakers, teachers, program staffs, and student participants at our partner school, it was explained that the S.T.E.M courses incorporate technology, engineering and mathematics into scientific studies. We displayed posters of STEM projects done by students from Francis Scott Middle School in the US so local participant can get inspired and have an idea of how a S.T.E.M project looks like.

Encouraging Creativeness

This task started by conducting a whole-class discussion regarding what the students participants already knew about S.T.E.M and what they thought it would benefit them and foster ingenuity and creativity. Although this task was a bit intimidating at first during the meeting, student participants quickly let go any fear and jump into the creative practice. The creative Q&A was very interesting. Participants had to express themselves freely, openly and what they would like to become in the future by applying what they would learn during this initiative. They enjoyed the challenge of becoming entrepreneur, nurse, and carpenter and many more.

Mariam, one of our 9^th grade participants said during the creative discussion: ‘’I love this! This is fun!” so many times. A couple of students participants said that this piqued their interest in business ownership, and one shared that she would love to possibly open a bakery in the future! The project prompted so many quality discussions, which led to a greater understanding of the assigned tasks.

Thank you again for helping Manengouba Foundation extend our work to reach more participants and make impacts in their lives. Please stay connected with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @manengouba. Please share our work with friends, family and continue to support us at https://goto.gg/36545