Over 1,000 stu­dents have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the RSC Digikids Tech In­cu­ba­tor va­ca­tion camp since it launched on Ju­ly 17, 2023, Dig­i­cel an­nounced in a re­lease on Tues­day.

The free hy­brid tech­nol­o­gy va­ca­tion camp for ages 8 to 12, was es­tab­lished to em­pow­er young peo­ple to be­come dig­i­tal cre­ators, the com­pa­ny said.

The non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion “Re­store a Sense of I Can” (RSC) is host­ing the camp with the sup­port of the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion.

Dig­i­cel Busi­ness in­vest­ed $120,000 in­to the camp, which was used to pur­chase train­ing kits in­clu­sive of mi­ni drones, cod­ing in­ter­face tabs, Ar­duino starter kits, Ar­duino sen­sor kits, snap cir­cuits and ro­bot mas­ter cod­ing kits. RSC is a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to so­cial de­vel­op­ment through ed­u­ca­tion, and one of its on­go­ing projects is es­tab­lish­ing and sup­port­ing tech­nol­o­gy clubs in schools through­out the Caribbean.

Dig­i­cel said: “Dur­ing the vir­tu­al ses­sions, campers learnt about sim­u­la­tions, dance code, cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, web de­vel­op­ment, au­dio edit­ing and video edit­ing. RSC has al­so been vis­it­ing com­mu­ni­ties to host one-day, in-per­son camps. Young campers have come out in large num­bers for this op­por­tu­ni­ty to get hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence with cod­ing and ro­bot­ics, with 130 stu­dents at­tend­ing the one-day camp at San Fer­nan­do Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Au­gust 9 and 150 at­tend­ing at Pt Lisas Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Au­gust 17.”

Campers par­tic­i­pat­ed on-site in ac­tiv­i­ties such as build­ing a web­site, build­ing a cir­cuit board and earned their cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in dance code.

“The campers were so ex­cit­ed to use the Quiver app to in­ter­act and en­gage with their coloured pic­tures. It was great to ex­pe­ri­ence the en­thu­si­asm of our pre-teen campers who are hav­ing fun while be­ing in­tro­duced to im­por­tant new skills. They are learn­ing func­tion­al dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy and gain­ing mar­ketable skills from this camp, giv­ing them a sol­id foun­da­tion for suc­cess in this ever-evolv­ing dig­i­tal world,” said Di­ana Mathu­ra-Hob­son, Project Of­fi­cer at the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion.

There are still two in-per­son camp days com­ing up, one at the Bel­mont Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre and one at Care­nage Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, with dates to be an­nounced soon.

There will al­so be a re-run of the camp day at Pe­nal Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre next week Wednes­day, as at­ten­dance on the orig­i­nal date was se­vere­ly im­pact­ed by heavy rain­fall.