Victor Mecoamere

Victor Mecoamere

Three young five-member school teams of South Africa's budding scientists, technologists and engineers are the top achievers in the Smart Young Mindz Challenge.

They are:

Metropolitan Raucall: Rafeeah Mangera, Shazia Akhalwaya, Azeezah Saloojee, Mahomed Ozayr Abdulla and Muhamed Kolaat.

lMondeor High School: Nosipho Kunene, Thando Gumede, Busisiwe Gambu, Makhosazana Dubazana and Iris Nxumalo.

l Pretoria Girls High School: Eleanor Harding, Keyuri Naidoo, Samantha Rogers, Trudie Spangenberg and Ting-Ting Zhang.

Metropolitan Raucall were given R50000 at an awards ceremony, while Mangera, Akhalwaya, Saloojee, Abdulla and Kolaat pocketed R8000 plus a R1000 cellphone.

The second-placed team - Kunene, Gumede, Gambu, Dubazana and Nxumalo - each got R4000 and a cellphone worth R1000 each. Mondeor High school got R5000.

The third-placed team - Harding, Naidoo, Rogers, Spangenberg and Zhang - each got R2000 and a cellphone worth R1000. Pretoria Girls High School received R5000.

Kliptown High School, who are the challenge's 2007 champions through Jermaine Goliath, 16, Mellisa Khatoin, 14, Zora Bailey, 14, Nemisha Granciol, 14 and Clarisa Lawrence, 15, brought three teams to the contest.

A larger number of entries has been received this year after 14 induction workshops were conducted by Shonisani Muleya, an engineer.

Muleya, who has been nicknamed "Ashifashabba" or "DJ Shabba", after the funnyman of that name, is the project's ambassador.

Pupils were required to tackle the following challenges :

lDeveloping a slang dictionary;

lHighlighting Gauteng's reputation as a multicultural, multilingual and politically-diverse cosmopolis;

lFormulating innovative alternative power sources; and

lProviding water recycling solutions.