Taking lead in inspiring lives

While at Harvard, she launched and led the first Zambian robotic team at the FIRST Global, which organises a yearly international robotics challenge to ignite a passion for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

She first heard about the Pan-African Robotics Challenge while channel surfing in her living room in Kitwe.

The programme enthralled her. She thought a robotics competition could inspire her fellow Zambians to take an interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects.
Kasepa began looking for a robotics competition that Zambian youths could join, and found FIRST Global. But Zambia was not among the 162 countries participating, so she asked about future contests.

The organisers urged her to launch a team for 2017 even though other nations had already begun raising money and training students.

“It felt like such an outside idea. I wondered if it was even possible,” she says. “I decided to take up the challenge. If you never dare to start, you probably will never end up starting at all.”

She called her mentor, Peter Lungu, director of ZISD to recruit youths that are interested in the Robotic Challenge.

They enlisted seven students, set up a robotics shop at ZISD headquarters, and ordered the FIRST Robotics kit of materials to build the machine and basic construction guides.

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