Project 1808 will be hosting its 3rd annual Science and Leadership Festival in Kabala, Koinadugu, Sierra Leone January 4-6, 2018 (10 AM- 8PM) and in Wellington, Freetown, Jan 12 (3PM) and 13 (10 AM-8 PM).
The events in Kabala and Freetown will feature activities and curriculum written by Project 1808 global and local volunteers in partnership with students/faculty at University of Wisconsin-Madison and implemented by students and volunteers from Kabala, various partners in Sierra Leone and abroad.
For this year’s festival, a number of volunteers from US and around the world will accompany Project 1808 Founder Dr. Alhaji N’jai and Program Director Dr. Linda Vakunta to the Kabala, Koinadugu District and Wellington in Freetown, where they will implement small pointed and targeted activities that builds science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and leadership capacity among students, youths, and adults in the community. The Sierra Leonean students will then work with small groups of younger students on the day of the event, helping them to explore the worlds of biology, ecology, physics, chemistry, leadership, and more.
In 2017, over 500 students and community members attended the festival in Kabala where they observed, experimented, and explored the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, ecology, leadership, and more etc. through hands-on experiments and demonstrations. Last year’s microscopy station was the most popular station featuring a compound microscope and paper microscopes “Foldscopes” donated by Prof. Manu Prakash Lab at Stanford University.
More broadly, Project 1808 is a non-profit based in Madison, WI that has long been involved in youth capacity building and community development in Sierra Leone through a school-community-University partnership model. They currently support the education and wellbeing of over 400 students in the Koinadugu District of Sierra Leone through scholarships, after-school classes, computer literacy programs, and leadership opportunities. Project 1808, Inc firmly believes that Science and Leadership are critical for solving basic challenges in society. For young people, Science can enhance abilities to problem solve, and ability to evaluate evidence, which is linked to academic success. Leadership is significant in all aspect of our lives and successful leaders are known to display key characteristics of servant leaders; listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people and building community.
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