Announcing the Lambaye Innovation Challenge - State Department Grant Awarded

Grant Funded by U.S. State Department

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that the U.S. Embassy in Dakar has awarded Students for Senegal, the maximum allowable grant award to create a new science, technology, engineering, arts and math (STEAM) program at the Lambaye Learning Center: The Lambaye Innovation Challenge (LIC).

Robotics program at the learning center

The Lambaye Innovation Challenge is an innovative cross-cultural program aimed at primary and secondary school students designed to increase access to Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) education in rural Senegal. Through a yearlong expert-guided workshop series, students will have access to STEAM experts and have the freedom to identify a problem they are passionate about and provided the STEAM resources to attempt an innovative solution.

This program will begin in fall 2020 and run for a full academic year. It will increase the long term capacity of the Lambaye Learning Center to provide educational resources in rural Senegal, as well as serving as a meaningful and impactful educational program for the more than 200 students who will be taking part in it.

The idea behind the LIC is that it is student-led and expert-driven. STEAM experts in Senegal and the United States will lead a workshop series that will run the full year to teach essential skills. In addition, students will be broken into teams with both U.S. students from Mamaroneck High School and Senegalese students from Lambaye. Each team will identify a problem in the local community in Lambaye and then, through a mentoring process, bring STEAM skills they are learning to attempt to propose a solution and analyze the impact. You can learn more about the method here.

This project will be led at the local level in Lambaye with support from our team in the United States. We are actively looking for individuals passionate about education to work with us on this project. Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in learning more.

Thank you!

We want to thank the more than 30 individuals who directly contributed to making this grant possible including LLC director Assane Fall, the entire Students for Senegal board of directors, the BKSK Architects team, as well as the contributions by the more than 20 MHS students who helped us design the first phase of the curriculum and were instrumental to its success. We also want to thank all the individuals in Senegal including Bibi Seck, and the experts at Digital School Technologies who are providing their advice and expertise. Last, we especially want to thank the U.S. Embassy in Dakar and the State Department for their confidence and trust in us, we look forward to this next exciting phase of Students for Senegal with our new partners!