Boys and girls from Tilbury and across Essex had a special Christmas surprise this week when they made a visit to Amazon in Tilbury to take part in a Christmas-themed day of STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) fun with Barnardo’s.
The children, who are part of the Barnardo’s Essex Child and Wellbeing service, visited Amazon in Tilbury with the charity as part of a programme called Amazon Future Engineer.
Amazon Future Engineer is one of several STEM programmes run by Amazon in the UK and is aimed at inspiring, educating and enabling 10,000 children to try computer science over the next two years. Amazon’s STEM programmes are endorsed by the British Science Association.
During their visit to Amazon, the boys and girls visited Santa’s Grotto and took part in a Christmas-themed STEM workshop where they programmed their very own robots, had a tour of the fulfilment centre, and learned about technology.
The children also took part in Hour of Code, a one-hour introduction to computer science designed to demystify code, to show that anybody can learn the basics. Anyone can take part, for free, at Hour of Code.
At the end of their special tour, the children had a Christmas party with some of the team at Amazon in Tilbury and Father Christmas. Following the event, the boys and girls took home their own STEM-themed Christmas presents, which included LEGO sets and activity books.
During the Christmas visit, Amazon also announced that it had made a donation of £30,000 to Barnardo’s to help the charity continue its work with vulnerable children across the UK. The donation will support Barnardo’s work transforming the lives of vulnerable children, young people and families across the UK.
