Africa-Press – Botswana. Jwaneng Mine, in partnership with De Beers Group and Women in Engineering (WomEng), kick-started the second phase of the Girls in Engineering (GirlEng) programme in an endeavour to encourage girls to venture into male-dominated careers.
Speaking at a workshop in Jwaneng on Wednesday, Jwaneng Mine senior manager- transformation, Ms Ndibo Macheke, said the programme resonated with Debswana’s Building Forever Strategy and provided a platform for girls to acquire knowledge on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) related fields.
The programme intends to provide an opportunity for girls to explore future careers in STEM and it attracted around 200 female learners from junior secondary schools in Jwaneng, Mabutsane and Maokane.
Ms Macheke noted that the programme was intended to equip participants with the necessary knowledge and skills that would enable them to compete with their male counterparts.
“It is for this reason that the workshop is designed in a holistic way with an integrated approach to inspire and ignite passion for creating a better future through solving problems and challenges using STEM,” she said.
She noted that from the 10 000 girls target in Botswana by 2030, a total of 500 girls from Jwaneng and its peripheries had benefitted since the first phase undertaken in September 2019.
She urged the girls to seize the opportunity to prepare and position themselves for future careers in STEM disciplines.
“I implore you to take today’s experience as a springboard that will launch you to excellent academic performance that will afford you the opportunity to study for STEM-related careers. It is our hope that your interaction with the women engineers who have graced this auspicious event will demonstrate to you that consistent effort, passion and resilience are important to the journey of becoming an engineer,” she noted.
For her part, WomEng programme coordinator, Ms Nomfundo Mkhonto, said as a mining country, it was important for Botswana to have platforms that encouraged young women to venture into male-dominated space.
She said even though STEM subjects were available in the curriculum, there was a need to keep encouraging women to follow up and eventually be established in those careers.
“As we bridge this gap, we want girls and women to occupy spaces and actually be comfortable in those spaces because they are equally capable,” she said.
She said they had so far reached a total of 70 000 girls between 14 and 18 years in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Canada, against their one million target by 2030.
She noted that the interaction with girls from various backgrounds was not only an eye-opening experience but also came with long-lasting conversations that would make a much-needed impact across the world. A geotechnical engineer with Jwaneng Mine, Ms Queen Kebatsetse implored girls to be dedicated in order to persevere in their goals.
She said they should be able to persevere despite the challenges for them to achieve what they wanted in their studies and careers.
However, she noted that the field was interesting since they learnt about other disciplines which they interacted with in their line of work.
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