The Innovative Young Minds (IYM) program is run by the Hutt City Council and Hutt City Rotary with some help from other local Rotary Clubs, including us at Eastern Hutt. It provides young women in years 11 and 12 (the old 5th and 6th forms) with exposure beyond the school gates to the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Manufacturing - the STEMM subjects. Traditionally these have tended to be male dominated fields but they are now accessible and available to women if they know about them.
Des Darby and I had previously interviewed three Naenae College students, Alaa Loulou, Cindy Zhu and Ilma Aminudeen, all of whom gained places on the course, with our club sponsoring two of them. One of them, Ilma, was in the first cohort and Jaye Howey had the pleasure of hearing her speak on behalf of them all at the Grand Hall of Parliament.
Ilma Aminudeen at the Grand Hall of Parliament, and Cindy Zhu with Alaa Loulou at the Innovation Dragons Den
This year the program ran over two weeks and involved eighty students in total. Each week, 20 of the students were local and 20 were from other parts of New Zealand. I had the privilege of being a volunteer on seven of the ten week days.
