Davao City—The Aboitiz Group reinforced its long-standing support for science, technology, engineering and mathematics or STEM education in the country as it launched the ‘Kabataan Inyovator: An Aboitiz Robotics Competition’ as an initiative to support the country’s young scientists, starting with the Davao leg.
Kabataan Inyovator (a play on the words ‘inyo’ which means ‘yours’ and ‘innovator’) aims to introduce innovation in solving community problems through robotics.
Aboitiz Foundation Inc. and Davao Light and Power Company led the competition launch on Aug. 12 in Davao City, capping a two-day training session (Aug. 8 to 9 for elementary students, Aug. 10 to 11 for high school students).
It was developed by robotics group Pinoy Robot Games covering robot programming, robot games and dynamic response and project ideation and evaluation for 20 Davao City public elementary and high school teams.
The competing teams, endorsed by the Department of Education-Region 11, will receive further online training and mentoring from September to November and compete at the Mindanao-wide Kabataan Inyovator competition in December (under the robot “sumo wrestling,” “line tracing,” and innovation fair categories).
“Education has long been a priority advocacy of the Aboitiz Group. We fully support our young scientists in their exciting pursuit of new innovations that will eventually help build the nation and in turn support our thrust of co-creating communities that are safe, empowered, and sustainable,” said Maribeth Marasigan, Aboitiz Foundation first vice president and chief operating officer.
In line with the 1987 Constitution’s recognition of science and technology as “essential for nationalism, development, invention, innovation and their utilization,” Kabataan Inyovator represents the Aboitiz Group’s next level of support following its earlier SSES initiatives
Kabataan Inyovator traces its roots back to AboitizPower geothermal unit AP Renewables Inc.’s Youth Leaders Summit themed “Powering Kabataan Inyovators” in 2018.
AboitizPower introduced this brand name which aims to encourage innovation and gives ownership to the summit participants, a.k.a. “Inyovators”, who will develop innovative solutions and process improvements.
Aside from promoting the Aboitiz core values of innovation and teamwork, Kabataan Inyovator aims to provide supplemental support to the beneficiaries of the Special Science Elementary Schools through practical applications in the robotics competition and increase STEM brand and corporate social responsibility awareness by allowing youth to apply learnings through invention.
The Kabataan Inyovator champion team will receive an upgraded robotics kit, witness its winning prototype deployed in its host community and closely monitored to assess its efficiency and impact, and represent the Philippines in the World Robot Olympiad in Quebec, Canada.
