Today’s young generation must be introduced to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) from a young age to help them in choosing their career path in medicine, science or engineering.
Buk bilong Pikinini’s Early Childhood Education program helps to provide children with the foundations in numeracy, problem solving and various play-based STEM activities throughout the year, however, more should be done in fostering careers in Information and Communications Technology or ICT.
BbP believes that with the launch of their new publication entitled ‘When I grow up – I want to be an ICT officer’ it will help children understand and choose jobs and skills needed in the field.
As is tradition, a child is selected to feature the reader and that lucky girl was 6-year old Melanie who with other BbP children went on a field trip to the NICTA office accompanied by Niunet CEO David Valentine and BbP IT Officers, Philip Luke and Richard Bridger.
The children got a chance to learn about how IT equipment worked and David Valentine was Melanie’s role model for the day teaching her few things she needed to know to work in ICT.
Executive Officer, Leanne Resson, on behalf of BbP was grateful to their partners Niunet and NICTA for their support to provide children with vital insight into the world of ICT.
Ms Resson said: “By seeing role models in action, the children will be able to understand that they too can aim for such careers despite coming from a remote village or urban settlement. We also hope that this reader will allow more girls to see themselves in an IT role in the future. If you can’t see it – you can’t be it.”
David Valentine said the reader would encourage the next generation of systems, network and cybersecurity engineers to take up ICT at an early age, increasing their chances of building successful careers.
“Building better partnerships is how we inspire our younger Papua New Guineans to explore careers in ICT,” he said.
NICTA Fund Manager, Ruth Nelson said that NICTA through the Universal Access Services (UAS) Regime is passionate about rolling out ICT services to remote and unserved areas of PNG targeting schools and communities in rural areas to see BbP promote careers in ICT through books for young children.
“We hope to see Melanie and a lot of other girls become recipients of this scholarship and go on to have successful careers in ICT,” she said.
In PNG, ICT Sector is still predominantly a male dominated career choice, to promote female participation, NICTA has a Girls in ICT Tertiary Scholarship Programme.