Project X, New Zealand: Helping to celebrate the IET’s 150th anniversary

Project X, an IET-funded initiative, was launched 10 years ago in Christchurch, with the objective to introduce intermediate school students to different uses of tools and procedures to assemble an electronic circuit board in the form of a robot. 

This year, as part of our 150^th anniversary, we collaborated with Tonui Collab and the Matai research centre to run this engineering workshop which enabled children to have fun whilst assembling a fully-functioning robot.

The workshop taught the children how to identify the electrical components, LED lights and robotic frames and learn how to solder them together, allowing them to work with real tools and have a sense of what it is really like to be an engineer.

The aim is to continue inspiring the future generation of engineers, technicians and trade artisans with Project X by showing them the diversity within STEM and to imagine a different future for themselves.

The workshop ended with the children singing a waiata, a traditional Maori song, to the attending professionals.

The organisations who helped us put together this workshop for Project X, hope to have further collaborations and deliver similar workshops, to other Tairawhiti children.