Summer in the breadbasket parish is usually defined by blistering heat, families on excursions, and farmers battling the humidity.
Summer 2026 added something different: robots and code.
Through the HEART/NSTA Trust, 42 secondary students from six schools swapped days at the rivers across the parish for a robotics lab at the HEART/NSTA Trust in Chocolate Hole, Junction.
The Camp
On the first morning, the lab sounded less like a classroom than a workshop floor — small motors buzzing, students huddled over circuit boards, the whole room waiting for the moment a robot first rolled forward. For the 42 teenagers gathered there, it was day one of three weeks spent learning to make machines move and respond.
The three week camp gave them a hands-on entry point into robotics and the technologies increasingly shaping the world of work.
Six schools, one lab
The camp brought students together from across the parish:
- Munro College
- Hampton School
- Maggotty High School
- B.B. Coke High School
- New Forest High School
- St. Elizabeth Technical High School
Ordinarily, these students would never share a workspace. Distance keeps some of the schools apart; the mix of traditional and non-traditional institutions keeps others in separate worlds altogether. For three weeks, that changed. Learning side by side became a first taste of working in a diverse environment — a skill every worker of the future will need.
Learning by building
Rather than working from a textbook, participants spent their days on projects. Along the way, they picked up practical skills in programming, engineering design, problem-solving and teamwork — and got their first real look at where a STEM path could take them.
For many, it was a first encounter with the tools behind tomorrow’s jobs, and a chance to picture themselves doing that work.