Seychelles robotic team gets financial support |17 October 2019

Team Seychelles with their robot in a souvenir photograph with guests

The group of 10 students who will be representing Seychelles at the 2019 FIRST Global Robotic competition to be held in Dubai from October 24-27 have received a donation of R100,000 from the Environment Trust Fund.

This was during a short presentation at the Blue Economy head office at the Oliaji Trade Centre in Victoria yesterday afternoon.

For the competition, each country will be designing one robot and will partner with two other countries during the competition. The Seychelles team have already constructed their robot which was on display.

Team Seychelles comprises Jacob Isnard, Miguel Malbrook, Alissa Dogley, Jacqueline Andre, Jayant Gondariya from Anse Boileau secondary school, Christie Rath and Rohan Albert from Mont Fleuri and Anse Royale secondary respectively, Ronan Varsani and Mikhail Rudchenko from International School Seychelles and Carl Gedeon from Pointe Larue secondary. They are being mentored by Joseph Raj from the National Institute for Science, Technology and Innovation (Nisti).

The students were chosen for their knowledge and interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (Stem).

The chief executive of Nisti, Xavier Estico, accepted the donation on behalf of the team and thanked the Environment Trust Fund for their continuous support as they donated to last year’s team as well.

“One of our main objectives is to merge technology with environment and use technology in a way that will not harm the environment,” said Denis Matatiken, chairman of the Environment Trust Fund.

He added that competitions like this will benefit the participants as the theme involves removing pollutants from the ocean and this is very important because it sensitises the younger generation about the adverse effects of ocean pollution.

Besides the donation from the Environment Trust Fund the Seychelles team

has received other donations from Vijay Construction, Kenya Airways and H

Savy Insurance.

The team will leave for Dubai on October 23, with the hope of ranking among the top 20 worldwide.