The AshesiGhana iGEM team hosted a session with Ashesi University students. The event was designed to introduce students to synthetic biology, its applications, and about project that this year’s iGEM team was tackling. The program also served as a way to encourage students to enroll for the ‘Synthetic Biology’ course in Ashesi university. The session was a success! The number of students that enrolled shot up by 5 after the session. That is, it was 5 times more than the initial enrollment number. We even had other non-science majors curious about the field of biology and how they could potentially find their way researching in these fields/ having the opportunity to join next year’s iGEM team. Prizes were up for grabs for the winners that answered all our synthetic-biology-related questions, that we strategically mentioned throughout the interactive presentations.
One of the prouder moments in our human practices came when we organized a trip to a local Ghanaian primary school in Berekuso. What started as a collaboration with the Patras iGEM team (to review a comic book and to translate the entire comic into our local dialect, i.e., Akan Twi), led to a bonus human practice. The iGEM Patras team was excited about our offer to distribute these ‘Synthetic Biology’ educative books, to students in local communities. These students were more comfortable reading and understanding local languages. Both the teachers and the students at the school, were glad to have these materials. We made 18 + complete copies, so that they could have them in their local libraries. This is sure to pique their interest in the field of synthetic biology.
Based on our research, we discovered that synthetic biology currently demonstrates a strong gender bias, reaffirming the global trend, with only 30% of all leadership positions being held by females. Hence, the team journeyed to an all-girls school [A.S.A high school] in Ghana, for a fun and interactive session with the students. The headteacher [Ms. Gifty Ghansah] was delighted to have us come over and share our knowledge with the girls. The students were from all over Africa, including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and more. Three members of the current Ashesi iGEM team were former students of this high school, and it was great to share their experience with the girls and empower them, through their knowledge of synthetic biology. The team delivered a presentation on DNA, its structure, plasmids, and our biosensor project for iGEM. Afterwards, we had an interactive session with the girls. We taught them how to extract some DNA from bananas, and build DNA fragments (out of gummy bears and toothpicks). Finally, they were taught how to design a plasmid using beads.