Nine year-12 and year-13 students, from Tauhara, north of Taupō, have been lucky enough to attend a tech bootcamp at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington.
The week-long event ran in conjunction with the Tahara North No.2 Trust, of Ngāti Tahu and Ngāti Whaoa iwi.
The tech bootcamp's focus is to provide an experience to inspire rangatahi who are uncertain about pursuing science, technology, engineering and math (the S.T.E.M subjects).
Teaomaori.news spoke to coordinator Tahlia Crabtree, from Victoria University about the programe.
“We put on a week-long camp where all of these rangatahi can come together and get a taste of what a real science career is like, and also get them to interact with as many people, like researchers and students, as possible.”
The collaboration with the trust is made possible with Victoria’s research grants, with both the trust and the university’s similar values at the core, “such as creating sustainability and growing economies”.
“That has been supported by the Ministry of Business through our advanced energy technology and platforms programme.”
Activities in the programme include building self-driving robots and making aspirin in labs, to name a couple.
“The bootcamp has been really successful so far. Previous rangatahi have said it has inspired them to think about a career in S.T.E.M.
"Some of them have not thought about going to university until they’ve come to this camp and they said, this is not as scary as I thought’. We’re really glad to be breaking down those barriers.”