A team from Mendip Studio School in Writhlington has beaten hundreds of young people across the country to make it to the final forty of the Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize.
The Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize, delivered by Nesta Challenges, pairs entrepreneurial skills not usually taught in the classroom with the STEM curriculum to encourage young innovators from across the UK, aged 11-16, to create tech solutions to the big challenges of our time – like climate change, healthy living, ageing well and staying better connected.
The forty teams in the running will now work with tech industry mentors to develop prototypes of their ideas ahead of the final judging in July where the winner will be awarded £20,000 for their school or youth group, while three runners-up will win £5,000 each.
Ed Jones, Amalia Page, Alex May, Joe Weyman and Otto Johnson have made the final forty with their Rainforest DRAGEN Project. It is a product that records environmental data, with a focus on rainforests and conservation, accompanied by a website for sharing data, and learnings.
It is all the more impressive considering they developed and
entered their idea whilst working remotely at the height of lockdown.
As well as being paired with an industry mentor, the teams will be supported with hardware grants, and will be invited to a virtual Enterprise Academy business day where they will learn important business skills.
Lauren Kisser, Director at Amazon’s Development Centre in Cambridge, and Judge for the Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize, said: “Supporting young people to discover a passion for – and ultimately consider future careers in – STEM is more vital than ever, and it’s fantastic to see such great engagement in the prize across the country.
“It’s been a joy to see what the nation’s next generation of inventors and innovators have come up with, especially under such unusual and challenging circumstances this year.
“The Amazon Longitude Explorer prize is part of Amazon Future Engineer, our comprehensive childhood-to-career programme to inspire, educate and enable children and young adults from lower-income backgrounds to discover computer science and engineering.
“We’re looking forward to getting started with the mentorship programme and seeing the finalists’ ideas come to life.”
The Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize aims to address the lack of diversity in STEM industries by providing young people from all backgrounds with an introduction to the possibilities of entrepreneurship in STEM and becoming the disruptors of the future.
To find out more about the Amazon Longitude Explorer Prize and all forty of the finalist teams, visit: https://longitudeexplorer.challenges.org/