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Global Minimum Inc.Receives a $766,100 Investment from The Lemelson Foundation to Scale Invention Education Programs in Kenya

27 September 2019

Pop-up demo lab at At. Aloysius School in Kibera, Kenya

David Moinina Sengeh,  (Sierra Leone, UWC Red Cross Nordic 2004-2006), (UWC Red Cross Nordic 2004-2006), a Sierra Leonean Biomechatronics  engineer at the MIT Media Lab, is an inventor, founder and President of Global Minimum Inc. (GMin), an international charitable organization that encourages young innovators and leaders in Africa to engage with critical thinking skills and hands-on learning programs to tackle challenges affecting their communities. GMin provides enabling tools, safe space, workshops, mentorship, resources and network, ultimately equipping young people in Africa with unique opportunities to take their future into their own hands. GMin through their flagship project, Innovate Challenges – a mentoring program created to inspire a culture of innovation and self-sufficiency among high-school students, is currently operational in Sierra Leone, Kenya and South Africa working with young people age 13-18.

In December 2015, The Lemelson Foundation, an organisation that believes that invention can solve many of the biggest economic and social challenges of our time, embarked on a major partnership with GMin by investing $ 766,100 (Ksh.76 million) in GMin for the period of 2016 to 2019. In partnership with The Lemelson Foundation over the next three years, GMin will launch three Innovation Labs and expand their Innovate Challenge program in Kenya, enabling young learners to develop problem-solving, collaboration, and critical thinking skills, and provide a model for learner centred, participatory, and project-based approach to education.

“Young people have bright ideas about the problems that face their communities, but those ideas are seldom expressed or heard. We aim at enabling students to ask questions about those issues, develop and deploy meaningful solutions and support their learning through the entire process,” said David Sengeh.

GMin is uniquely positioned to help build a pipeline of young inventors who can ask questions and feel empowered to use their science and engineering skills to solve real problems that Kenya’s society faces. Its new pedagogical approaches, such as hands-on after-school innovation labs and invention competitions in partnership with secondary schools in Kenya, will further provide an important model and lessons that contribute to national and local learning and education policy frameworks in Kenya and beyond.