Nine Indigenous girls sent to Waterloo for hands on science camp

Photo by Sylvia Pond.

MyYellowKnife.com reported that nine Indigenous girls and their guardians from the Northwestern Territories (NWT), Nunavut and Northern Ontario were sent to the 2019 IMPACT Camp at the University of Waterloo by De Beers Group.

The IMPACT Camp is a hands-on science camp where the girls got to experiment, learn about science, engineering and other focuses including careers to be had in those fields, and learn traditional Indigenous skills such as stone carving, beading and other teachings.

The camp, which was in its fourth year, was a two-day, post-secondary education awareness camp for Grade 7-8 Indigenous girls hosted at St. Paul's University College at the University of Waterloo.

The goal of the camp is to promote post-secondary education awareness and build confidence in girls to consider a career in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.

Candace Thomson, a communications specialist for De Beers Group, said that the goal of the camp is to give the girls a chance to explore different science subjects and to open their minds up to what's ahead.

"Part of the camp is to get some of these science fields on the girls' radar for when they start thinking about what they want to do and what they'd like to study in university," Thomson told MyYellowKnife.com.