Supervisor of the two Engineering students:
– Dr. Violet Lo (Founder of Inclusive Business Foundation)
– Dr. C.K. Chui (Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, University of Hong Kong)
The core of the STEM+ Leadership Week is the Training the Trainers Leadership Roundtables (TTLR) and the STEM+ challenges. The TTLR gives students a grounding of the value-based leadership training and the background training for teamwork and team spirit. The STEM+ challenges are designed and led by our fellows who are a post-doctoral researcher and PhD candidates from the University of Cambridge and the University of London. This year the four challenges are Genome Big Data, Health Innovation, Quantum Music, and the Future Cities. These challenges encourage students to step out of their comfort zone and to see a bigger picture of the world.
The student Adwithya Magow from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Hong Kong has worked amongst experienced programmers to help build a website interface and mobile applications that will be used during the Leadership Weeks in Zhenjiang and Bangkok. The website interface involves making a dashboard for the website which updates real-time as users gain more points through various events/activities. The mobile applications will assist in bringing some of the innovative ideas of the program to life, e.g. “Cool Parents” live competition, the parents were competing to get most “right” answers that match the students’.
Another student Pareen Khanna from the Department of Computer Science of the University of Hong Kong has worked amongst experienced programmers and data scientists to support the data science effort that will be used during the Leadership Weeks in Zhenjiang and Bangkok. The work includes using data science to keep track of the individuals’ progress and ensure the effectiveness of the program. Data will be collected through the preliminary questionnaires and feedback forms. All this data will be modelled to find patterns and closely analyze to see every participant progress, the progress of the program, in general, to improve the program more in the future.
All program is written will contribute to the computing & data science effort for the Next Gen Program and the STEM+ Leadership Week. The STEM+ Leadership Week will be held in China and Thailand on a very large scale with more than 1000 students.
Since the inception of the program in 2014, the program has impacted more than ten thousands young people and is working with more than twenty partnering schools and colleges in China, Asia and the UK. More than 95% of the students experienced self-discovery, learning more about themselves, their talents and strengthens, and that they can be very creative. And more than 97% feel that they are more ready for new challenges, and are inspired to make a difference to the society.
Adwithya Magow
Participating in the Inclusive Business Lab STEM+ Leadership Week in China and Thailand is one of the most adventurous and risky things I have done in my life. I am glad to say that the risk I took was worthwhile and that my experience over the summer allowed me to gain insight and practical experience in the vast world of programming, helped me mature as an individual whether it be through an increase in self-confidence or growth in self-belief. Over the summer, I have had very different and unique experiences which I never thought would be possible, met many new people and made some good friends and last but not the least was able to dive into and explore the culture of not just one but two breathtaking countries.
Above, I referred to my decision to take part as risky and adventurous. I say this because of two reasons. First, When I applied for the position, I had no experience and no knowledge in any of the technologies/programming languages they wanted but they saw my passion to learn and to do and gave me a chance. I had to work very hard to meet the expectations of the project. Doing so I gained greater knowledge and experience, of course, but more importantly, I am able to confidently believe in myself that I am able to do anything I put the mind into. Second, I had applied for this position to help with education technology in places I had never visited before and without any friend whom I knew beforehand. Doing so, forced me to interact and meet new people and to appreciate the culture more.
My role in the project was that of a web developer intern. As talked above before I did not know anything about web development, not even about HTML and CSS. After the event, I can confidently say I know HTML, CSS, Javascript, React, Typescript, Github, Heroku, Node, Express, MongoDB, Mongoose, etc. and have real programming experience with all of these languages and more.
I always believe in challenging oneself and doing things which make one uncomfortable in order to keep learning as a person. I was challenged in many ways exclusive from programming related tasks. I have always had stage fright. This makes it very hard for me to do presentations at University as well. I was challenged by having to go up on stage and talk about the technology I worked for and explain it to a crowd, I was challenged by having to dance and sing on the opening of the event in Bangkok and I was challenged when I had to rap on stage for the closing event in Bangkok. I believe this has helped me with my stage fright.
In Zhenjiang and Bangkok, we lived in two residences in different areas of the city, each place we lived in gave us a different exposure to the people, the food and the people of the city. Though the workload was intense, through time management, we visited many tourist attractions and experimented with different food.
In Zhenjiang, we visited many iconic places such as the Vinegar Museum, Zhenjiang Museum, etc. We even had a cultural trip, where we went to Shanghai and visited The Bund, Yu Garden, The Oriental Peral Tower etc. In Bangkok, we went to many tourist attractions as well such as The Grand Palace, The Chatuchak Weekend Market and many of the malls in Bangkok.
Pareen Khanna
I always wanted a chance to explore Mainland China and I wanted to do it in a more local way to understand the culture better and get a chance to really live outside my comfort zone considering I don’t know Mandarin at all. I feel Zhenjiang was the perfect city because while the youngsters did know English in the school which made communication while working easier, outside I had to do things on my own which made it very exciting. There were no foreigners compared to cities like Shanghai and Beijing so I was met with a lot of curious but warm stares. I was happy to answer questions like where am I from and even learnt how to say it in Chinese. The people were so hospitable and tried to understand me even if I was just saying the wrong translation of things. I also got a chance to visit Shanghai on one weekend to explore more around China and get to see more tourist places. While Shanghai was more international than Zhenjiang, because it was such a massive city exploring it was a new experience as well.
To describe a little more about my work, I first familiarized myself with all the technology that was already being used i.e the app was hosted on Heroku, read and understood the code on GitHub and the forms were created using TypeForm. The advantages and disadvantages of both MongoDB and MySQL for the backend database were weighed but MySQL was suggested because of its RDBMS nature. The tables were drawn up in MySQL and data was pushed into them through the app. I used MySQL Workbench to query the data. First, a test database was created which had a lot of testing data that needed to be properly sorted into the tables and then the resulting tables were used for data analysis. The resulting tables were then uploaded to Tableau for visualizing them in the form of graphs. For more accuracy and variation of tools, data analysis using Python was also done using libraries like Seaborn, NumPy, MatplotLib etc as well as utility functions were also created.
I also helped out in setting up forms for a few parts of the programs and tested out the existing applications extensively and troubleshoot any issues. During the Leadership week, I was amazed to see the potential of the young Chinese High School students. They were so creative and had so many wonderful ideas.
This internship provided me with a lot of insights about the outside world, my major and even myself. What really drove me to take up this internship apart from the technological aspect was the cultural and social exposure. Not only did this allow me to push myself outside my comfort zone regarding my major but also made me realise that sometimes there are so many things that happen along the way that you cannot predict and have to deal with but that’s what makes the whole experience very exciting and prepares you for the future.
“Leaders lead to change! What would the world look like when we have leaders who love and give to others? The journey they embark today will help their future tomorrow. It is a great harmony of voices and hearts and the message of unconditional love will stay in the mind of the students who will be the leaders of tomorrow.”
We would like to extend our sincere gratitude and appreciation for all of the support we received from our donors, which include:
