30 By 30 REPORT
Seems like obvious advice, but it took walking around the Winnipeg Fringe Festival last year and seeing the response to the Engineers Without Borders tent to realize the opportunity we have in Saskatchewan to reach out to the public at our provincial festivals.
Repeated surveys conducted by APEGS and Engineers Canada show that the public does not understand what our professions of engineering and geoscience are doing to contribute to society, despite being surrounded by and interacting daily with the work of thousands of engineers and geoscientists. It’s not their fault: most engineering and geoscience work is business to business and the results are just there. However, this gives us an opportunity to engage, be seen and talk about the professions.
30 by 30 has identified attraction to the profession as one of our key focus areas. This year the task group wanted to experiment with reaching out to children and their parents at some of the most popular festivals in the province, the Regina Cathedral Village Arts Festival and the Saskatoon Children’s Festival.
Some of the girls who will be entering our professions in 2030 are currently in grades 2 and 3. We want to let them and their parents know that engineering and geoscience is a great career path and that they are welcome.
Thanks to the efforts of 30 by 30 task group members Ben Frietag and Catherine Griffith, P.Eng, APEGS was able to partner with EYES and SciFi. We were able to engage a number of APEGS volunteers to talk to children and their parents. We had the K-12 Committee’s Tego blocks for the kids to play with, 30 by 30 buttons to hand out and additional brochures to give parents as we talked to them and their children played with the building toys. The eagerness to build with the Tego blocks was immediate, with a number of cars and structures being built, including a tower by a very promising kindergarten boy.
The team volunteering at the Cathedral Arts Festival estimated reaching over 250 kids and their accompanying parents in just one day. At the Saskatoon Children’s Festival the group estimates we talked to about 500-600 kids and parents each day that we were present.
The engineering giveaways were a great hit. As one of our volunteers noted, “The kids loved the pencil sharpeners and superhero pins! Some of the little girls particularly liked that they had girls on the pins. None of the boys seemed to mind that either.”
We also noted parents and volunteers wanted a set as well. The feedback from our volunteers at the two events has been excellent on how to improve for next year: more days, more geoscience activities, goodie bags and a better means of anchoring our banners.
Most importantly, APEGS was able to have meaningful conversations with people about why science is important and what it is that engineers and geoscientist, do for society. It’s definitely worthwhile to go to where the people are. Thank you to all our volunteers. 30 by 30 looks forward to working with you again.
PHOTO: Children’s Festival Volunteer: Anna Qureshi