May 3, 2016 – A very successful STEM Innovation Camp was held in the new offices of GE in South Jakarta on Wednesday 27 April. This event began at 8am and ended at 6:30pm – a very long day for both students and GE volunteers/mentors and judges. Even so – the enthusiasm of all involved was evident until the very end. Prestasi Junior was extremely pleased to be able to mobilise 46 GE personnel for the day. These individuals worked with 15 groups of five students from 15 representing 15 different education institutions. Their task was to solve the following challenge;

Smart City is considered to be one of the answer to the growing problem of urbanization. A city that can recycle its waste for better use, a city that can reduce its power consumption so it is more efficient, a city that provides smart public transportations, a city that can recycle its water for further usage, and a city that is facilitated with smart infrastructure. If you put yourselves as the Government of DKI Jakarta, what kind of Smart City you will be planning?

After lunch a team of nine senior people administrators from GE listened to, and critiqued, presentations by each of the groups. The top six were then selected and each presented in front of all participants and were, again judged by GE professionals. The challenge produced some very interesting and innovative responses and all displayed a real application to the task in hand. The winning team was from State High School 5 – a technical school with, arguably, limited resources in comparison to many of their competitors at the event. A most impressive component of this event was the commitment from GE personnel first as mentors and, secondly, as jury members. The volunteers certainly had an important positive impact on students involved in the event.