Over sixty young people from Puerto Varas, Puerto Montt, Calbuco and Mullen attended three workshops to develop their entrepreneurial ideas under a project implemented by San Sebastian University.
For three days, 16 groups of students from seven secondary schools in Lanquihu County participated in a virtual camp in which they carried out various activities related to leadership and project development using STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) methodology. This initiative is funded by the Los Lagos Provincial Government through the Competitiveness Innovation Fund (FIC), and is implemented by the University of San Sebastian Sidi de la Patagonia.
The participating institutions in the province are the Patagonia Alerce Cordillera de Alerce School; High Schools Bosque Nativo and Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna and Puerto Montt Commercial Institute; Francisco Hernández Ortiz Bicentennial School in Calbuco; Rosita Novaro School in Puerto Varas and Carelmapu Secondary School in Maullín Municipality. The courses were led by specialists from Fundación Ciencia Joven. The undertakings of these secondary schools relate to the areas of environment, energy, tourism and heritage.
Fransia Soto, a fourth year student at Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna Polyvalent Secondary School, recounts, “It was a very amazing experience, I had never thought of participating in something like this. I was able to learn so much, get to know people, get to know places and besides that , having a good time. From the beginning of the camp we did activities, we had an observer and our group was very united.”
Dylan Leon, of the Rosita Novaro School in Puerto Varas, highlights that the camp is “a unique experience, which also serves as a lesson for us as a group later, to develop other careers and for the university.”
The project “Promoting a Culture of Science, Technology and Innovation among Teachers and Secondary School Students in Los Lagos District Schools” seeks to train, over a three-year period, students from 52 institutions in the four districts of the district. “As a university, we are very pleased that young people from high schools in our area have been able to discover problems and propose solutions that, from technology and science, allow to improve the quality of life in their communities. Each group will now develop a prototype for their project, and we will see the students’ work at the district fair that will be held On May 17 in Puerto Montt, “explains Valeria Muñoz, Federal Education Foundation Coordinator for Education managed by San Sebastian University.
At the end of the first year of project implementation, a winning team will be selected at the regional level, whose students and professor will travel to an international internship at NASA in the United States.
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