IkamvaYouth was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to participate in the HIP2B2 FIRST Lego League (FLL), a tournament whereby learners create and program semi-autonomous Lego robots.

IkamvaYouth volunteers Sally Levesque and Jonty Jedeikin organised a team of enthusiastic young learners from Khayelitsha. Each member was delightful and contributed in his/her own way to a happy, motivated team. For two months we developed, programmed and refined our Lego robot at UCT, in order to achieve its tasks.

On the 29th of October all participating teams gathered at Canal Walk shopping centre for the FLL finals. This was the opportunity for all 26 teams to demonstrate their robots to the public. It was the climax of two months of hard work, and we all anxiously anticipated the event.

Our team successfully achieved our goals: We completed three successful missions which earned us 131 points – enough to be placed 5th in the second round. Overall, we were placed 16th - not bad for a team who unofficially called themselves “the underdogs”.

Considering our members had never seen Lego before and had had limited exposure to computers, we are very pleased with our achievements. Apart from the exposure to technology, and the fun of building robots, the greatest lessons learnt were those of communication, cooperation and team work. A big thank you to UCT and the Shuttleworth foundation for allowing us this enriching experience, and of course to our wonderful team, The Legolayers: Asandiswa, Khanyiso, Lawrence, Thandokazi, Xolani, Zimkhitha and Zukisa. You guys are stars!