KIDSGOTECH WORKSHOP HELPS KENYAN POOR CHILDREN TO BE INNOVATORS|肯亞女企業家設科技工坊 培養弱勢童成新創人才

Children from some of the poorest neighborhoods of Nairobi are being given a chance to become inventors through a new technology based learning program. KidsGoTech is a non-profit organisation started by a Kenyan entrepreneur to provide hands-on tech and engineering training for those future innovators. Kangeme slum is not an easy place for an ambitious child to grow up. Many children here drop out of failing schools early, and end up hustling on the streets to make ends meet. But fourteen-year-old Alex Mwathi is different. He lives in a small shanty in the slum with his older brother Nicholas Mutua and his wife, after losing both his parents to illnesses in the span of just a few months. Mutua and his wife struggle daily to make enough money to keep Mwathi in school. Each day Mwathi travels hours from home to attend a Christian missionary school, where his favourite subject is science. ==ALEX MWATHI== When I grow up I want to be an inventor. Then I work hard, open an orphan school, yes, and then help other children who cannot help themselves. This dream was inspired by KidsGoTech, a technology and engineering workshop for children. Several times a year on these special Saturdays, Mwathi joins a group of carefully selected students attending the workshop. KidsGoTech places paying students and non-paying students like Mwathi together for several hours to conduct experiments that help them learn about innovation in a hands-on way. KidsGoTech was started by Kenyan entrepreneur Ciiru Waweru as the non-profit arm of her children's furniture company, FunKidz, an internationally celebrated business that has been praised by US First Lady Michelle Obama. Through her success, Waweru was determined to give back to the next generation of Kenyan innovators and inventors. ==CIIRU WAWERU, founder of Kenya's KidsGoTech Program== We have a program called KidsGoTech we've been running for three years now under FunKidz. And it's amazing to see children at age 6 working with LED lights, breadboards, screwdrivers, you know, crocodile clips. And I really wish I had been introduced to some of those principles when I was that age. FunKidz was recently awarded funding for its efforts to improve the lives of children in Kenya. The money will allow Waweru to expand the KidsGoTech program to other disadvantaged children in communities across the country. TRANSLATED BY：JESSICA OY