Nadi-based Sangam SKM College won the Robocon High School Poster Competition when they introduced “SASAMAKI” at The University of the South Pacific’s (USP) Laucala Campus on 28 June 2019.

“SASAMAKI” is an i-taukei phrase that means clean-up. Over the decades there have been numerous competitions such as clean-up Fiji, Waidamudamu clean-up campaign, Solevu Clean-up campaign and 3R campaign within high schools and nationally. Using this concept and Fiji’s love for rugby game, their concept was to clean the rugby pitch after the match using robots. Just as in a match there are two teams, the same concept has been applied to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle robotic competition whereby each team will have three robots. R1(Robot 1) will be responsible for reuse (paper), R2 (Robot 2) will be responsible for recycle (bottles) and R3 (Robot 3) will be responsible for reduce (plastics).

SKM College was one of five finalists that were chosen from the competition, along with Tavua College, Nadi’s Swami Vivekananda College, Naitasiri Secondary and Suva-based Yat Sen Secondary.

The activity was held in the lead up to Robocon 2020 which Fiji is hosting, where a number of activities have been organised for high schools. Five school finalists were invited to share their ideas.

Dr Anjeela Jokhan, Acting Vice President Planning, Quality, Institutional Research and USP Commercial   said, “these were excellent presentations and all the schools were able to demonstrate very Fijian/Pacific ideas in the theme”.

She stated that the level of thought that went into their respective designs and in making their arguments on the design showed the level of thinking these students had.

“Their ability to work in teams was clearly demonstrated in their work,” Dr Jokhan added.

“It was extremely pleasing to see that even at High School level these students were able to think critically, synthesise their ideas and present them with confidence,” she noted.

Also present were the representatives from the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union who were thoroughly impressed with the presentations.

They mentioned that they organised High School Robocon competitions in Japan every year and that they would want to use some of the themes presented by the students at the event.

Last month the 2019-2020 School Competitions for the 2020 Asia-Pacific ROBOCON Competition was launched at USP by the Honourable Rosy Akbar, Minister for Education, Heritage & Arts in the presence of secondary school students and teachers including staff and students of USP.

Fiji will host the 2020 Asia-Pacific ROBOCON competition, which is expected to bring around 400 people to Fiji from 20 Asia-Pacific Countries.

Also in the lead-up to the event, USP is hoping to engage secondary schools students in a number of activities which include running a divisional competition in schools next year and bringing the top three finalists to the Local Completion which will be held in Suva during the 2020 Robocon Competition. There will also be one competition organised for primary schools.