The Taungana Africa program for girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is gearing up  to give 30 high school girls from rural Southern African countries the opportunity to join its annual expo.

The programs aim is to introduce the girls to potential careers, role models and organisations in each STEM industry.

The Taungana STEM Expo travels around a number of areas in the Southern African region to host outreach workshops with high school girls to promote STEM subject and career awareness.

Thirty finalists who have performed well in national maths and science exams in their respective countries are then selected from their schools to take part in a week-long expo, which sees them gathering in Gauteng to visit some of world’s biggest organisations in the sector such as Eskom, Thoughtworks, BMW and Anglo American.

In keeping with Taungana Africa’s vision to have a lasting impact beyond the expo week, the program equips the girls with entrepreneurial skills they can use to implement programs and businesses such as coding classes in their own communities and schools.

The girls receive support for their projects from Taungana Africa and its network of partners.

“Taungana believes in a generation of African girls that change their lives and contribute to sustainable development through science, technology, engineering, entrepreneurship and mathematics,” the program’s founder Sandra Tererai.

Taungana Africa is currently crowdfunding R59 000 to cover all costs involved in hosting the expo, the bulk of the funding will go towards travel and accommodation for the girls and their chaperones.

The campaign has managed to rack up R7 100 so far and winds up on August 9th.

[Source and image – Thundafund]