Zerah Dorasamy, Joash Serret winners of the GIS map designing competition |19 November 2021
A souvenir photograph with GIS staff and PS Morgan
Zerah Dorasamy from Beau Vallon primary school and Joash Serret from Grand Anse Praslin primary school are the grand winners of a map designing competition organised by the Geographic Information System (GIS) centre in the Ministry of Lands and Housing to mark World GIS Day on November 17.
They received their prizes from the principal secretary for lands, Muriel Morgan, during a short ceremony held at the Roche Caiman community centre on Wednesday morning in the presence of the Russian ambassador to Seychelles, Artem Alexandrovich Kozhin, the district administrator for Ile Perseverance 1 Aaron Bonnelame, teachers, parents, students and staff of the GIS. Joash was not present to collect his prize.
“I was expecting to win a prize but winning the first prize makes me really happy,” said Zerah, who has a passion for drawing but her first time drawing a map.
The designing competition for public and private primary schools in the country was divided into two categories – 6 to 9 years old and 10 to 12 years old.
Second after Zerah in the 6 to 9 years old category was Esther Elizabeth from Mont Fleuri primary school while Lillia Thelermont from Bel Eau primary school took the third place.
With Josh clinching the first place in the 10 to12 years old category, in second was Artistakh Kozhin from Trottersstop pre and primary school and the third place went to Rya Joubert from Bel Eau primary school.
It was last year during the celebrations of the 250th Anniversary of Victoria that the GIS team seized the opportunity to organise the competition with the aim of creating more GIS awareness among the younger generation and at the same time linking the same activity to our history. It is to promote their creative representations of the world, enhance their cartographic awareness and to make them more conscious of their environment. The competition last year (2020) was for secondary and post secondary institutions. They were provided clues relating to some key sites and landmarks of historical importance in Victoria which they needed to locate, take geo-tagged pictures as proof and answer some additional questions. Close to 100 participants took part in the competition.
This year for the primary schools competition, pupils had to produce a map of either their neighbourhood, schools or any other area of interest to them. There were 45 entries in the 6 to 9 years old category and 19 entries in the 10 to 12 years old category. They were judged on originality, creativity, interpretation and representation.
Apart from the designing competition for primary school pupils, the GIS centre also organised an internal quiz competition on GIS for its staff and the winner scoring the highest number of points was Sheena Banane.
Addressing everyone present at the short ceremony, PS Morgan stated that hundreds of thousands of organisations create billions of maps every year to tell stories, reveal patterns, trends, and relationships about almost any set of data one can imagine.
She noted that here in Seychelles, a number of institutions have been encouraged to showcase and publicise their GIS accomplishments, especially on the occasion of World GIS Day.
“I would like to urged all participants to not only use the GIS Day to raise geospatial awareness but to play a proactive role in promoting this technology continuously and to be ambassadors and continue to spread the word on GIS,” she said and thanked the students for their participation in the competition.
During the ceremony the GIS centre in partnership with the Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs launched a community mapping initiative to empower residents to identify and map various assets and features within their communities such as facilities, businesses and trails among others.
In launching the initiative on behalf of the ministry, Mr Bonnelame said in the districts they welcome the initiative since the GIS plays an important role in identifying locations of the alignment of proposed projects and how the property owners will be affected during the feasibility stage and assessing risk areas in emergency and processing comments for planning applications in the 26 districts being managed on Mahé, Praslin and La Digue.
GIS is a scientific framework for gathering, analysing and visualising geographic data to help make better decisions. The technology and application were introduced in the country in 1996. The centre aspires to eventually be able to engage the general public in this activity at a later stage.
Patrick Joubert
Photos by Joena Meme
