ISPACE Phoenix Kids awards 53 students

Accra, Aug. 18, GNA - ISPACE Phoenix Kids, A Non-Governmental Organisation, has awarded 53 kids who took part in a five-week technological programme it organised in Accra on Thursday.

Ms Favour Ozichukwu, the Programmes Manager of ISPACE Foundation, said the children, between the ages of five and 14, were trained in computer coding, website design, and developing games.

'We believe that if we start training children in technology at this age, it will help the whole technological ecosystem,' she said.

This year's training included robotics, 3D design, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) and Scratch, which is the creation of animations to equip the children with the necessary skills needed in the technological world.

Ms Ozichukwu said ISPACE expected the children to be abreast of the things they were taught and this was evident in their involvement in class, readiness to learn, and generation of games and cartoons.

She noted that the training was free and was sponsored by the Unlocking Women and Technology Programmes, a programme of ISPACE.

'An inadequate resource in the Agency has been a major challenge, which leads them to selecting only a few children to participate in the programme,' she said.

Ms Ozichukwu said the agency aims at incorporating Phoenix Kids in various schools' Information Technology Centre clubs.

Mrs Ernestina Edem Appiah, the Founder of Ghana Code Club, said they were in partnership with ISPACE to help expose the children to computer science.

She said the children were creative and the club channelled their ideas to the creation of animations and cartoons, which they presented in class.

Joseph Kerry, 10 years and Nana Koramah Abeasi, 12 years, both pupils of Association Community Module Basic School at Labone, who took part in the workshop, said they aspired to be computer scientists.

The workshop, they said, had equipped them with the basic skills needed in their career and would be helpful if other children also took part in it next year.

Madam Yetunde Oyeyemi, a parent whose children benefited from the workshop, commended ISPACE for the initiative, which would give the participants the opportunity to explore the technological world.

GNA

By Ernestina Serwaa Asante, GNA