Latest Stories - WK Students Win Young Aurora 2021 Competition!

18 Oct, 2021

Waterford Kamhlaba students, Yifei Cheng (IB2), Jassem Toumi (IB2), Prince Bashangezi (IB1), Violet Abraham (IB1), Tinotendashe (IB1), Luyanda Sihlongonyane (IB1) and Ruoxiao Xu (IB1) have won the Young Aurora 2021 competition.

Young Aurora is a competition designed to encourage students across all UWC schools and the African Leadership Academy to develop projects that address a humanitarian issue in the geographical vicinity of their school. The Waterford team had come up with a proposal for a project, Seed of Hope, that involves working with the youth at Mpaka Refugee Camp in Eswatini and aims at transforming a shipping container at the camp into a cozy youth hub that has internet capabilities and devices available that will allow for the setting up of an online learning platform in the camp.

Reacting to the news on Friday 15 October 2021, one of the students, Prince Bashangezi, thanked their teachers for the support they have given the team. “It has taken about 6 months of hard work, team work and collaboration for our team to get the first position. At first we did not know anything about the Young Aurora initiative but we got all the support we needed from the school’s Community Service department,” he said. He mentioned that at some point they were not optimistic because this kind of project was not new in the world since internet services had been provided in refugee camps before, adding that they had to think more broadly and keep improving the project proposal as they got feedback from the Aurora team and from school.

For this project, the students will partner with Amala Education who had shown interest in working with the refugee camp. After receiving the funds the students will start working towards implementation of the project, beginning in January 2022. The project will enhance the education of the refugees at Mpaka Refugee Camp who have been struggling with internet access for some time now.

Waterford Principal Patricia Angoy said as a school they are always happy when students take such initiatives aimed at empowering communities because that is in line with the historic mission of Waterford.  “We are proud of our students,” she said. 

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