YESA Passport Service

Meraka (within the CSIR in RSA) has been developing YESA as a child-centric integrative support mechanism for the South African Youth into Science Strategy, and Federation of Science, Technology, Olympiads and Competitions as well related projects such as FABLABs.

Full details for YESA can be found at its existing site at http://www.yesa.org.za/

Most of the elements of YESA have been assembled. Finally, the initiative has conceived of The My YESA Passport as a way to bring it all together, focused on the child.

A simple protoype of the YESA Passport Service and Journey Planner can be found at   http://yesa.metalab.co.uk/web/guest

Holding a My YESA Passport will provide children with an exciting and on-going way to collect and store their attendance and achievement stamps. In so doing they are building a personal record of their involvement with YESA courses and events. Such children will be involved in their own journey towards a career in SET – over a number of years.

The My YESA Passport Service will enable educationalists and policy makers to track the involvement and intentions of learners from Grade 1-12 with SET related activities.

Eventually, Job Interviewers, Training Colleges and Universities will be able to use an applicant’s YESA passport in order to understand what that girl or boy have done in the past – to further their interest in SET – especially during their personal and extra-curricular time.

There will be a number of issuing authorities which will then purchase stamps from YESA and record the activities per learners capturing this data onto a national database repository via the web.

YESA believes that there may well be scope for such an initiative in other developing countries within Africa. The intention is to develop a robust platform to start with and then expand the concept further with prospects of tagging on opportunities to even track sport, culture and other activities of the learners

The intention is to develop a robust platform to start with and then expand the concept further with prospects of tagging on opportunities to even track sport, culture and other activities of the learners During the first phase of the YESA Initiative, Moratho Media will work with YESA colleagues to establish a long-term sustainable approach focused on the My YESA Passport Portal Service.