Mission to Mars: Irish Girl Guides summer camp at DCU Lego Education Innovation Studio

The DCU Lego® Education Innovation Studio and the Irish Girl Guides joined forces to provide a summer camp aimed at promoting further education and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) for teenage girls aged between 14 and 18.

Twenty-four Girl Guides from all over Ireland took part in the week-long summer camp at the Lego® Education Innovation Studio in DCU’s Institute of Education, Drumcondra. Funded by the Higher Education Authority (HEA), the programme was developed and facilitated in partnership with Learnit, Ireland’s leading provider of STEM based Camps and the Irish Girl Guides.

Based around the theme ‘Mission to Mars’ the central focus of the summer camp was to develop computational skills while engaging in fun, hands-on and proactive robotics workshops. The girl guides worked in teams to research space exploration and to solve a series of missions by designing, building and programming their own robot.  

 It is planned that participants of the programme will work with the younger members of the Irish Girl Guide association to facilitate workshops at their International Camp in Tipperary later this summer. IGGNITE 2017 will host over 1600 young people from all across Ireland and as far away as Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Canada, the US and the Republic of Georgia, as well as areas closer to home, e.g. England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Speaking about the partnership, Professor Deirdre Butler, from DCU Institute of Education and camp facilitator, said:

“Over the course of five days, the Girl Guides have had a chance to explore some of the key challenges facing scientists and engineers today whilst developing important skills such as creative thinking, problem solving, team-building and communication.

With over 12,000 members nationwide aged between 5-30 years, we were delighted to partner with the Irish Girl Guides to design and develop this programme and we hope that the enthusiasm these young women have shown throughout is something they can share with the younger members of their association when they return home.”

Chief Commissioner of the Irish Girl Guides, Helen Concannon added:

“This is a perfect partnership for our members as we strive to give them confidence to take on whatever challenges life presents them with. By developing their STEM skills, these girls and young women are better equipped and can challenge the stereotypes of what girls can be in society. We are delighted to work with DCU IoE and the LEIS to develop such positive role models for our younger members.”