World Space Week 2002 Report

We distributed information to schools in SA informing them of World Space Week, targeting schools with access to email and fax, complementing the info on the website and the link to the offical website. This included information and entry forms on the UNESCO essay competition on "Space and Daily Lïfe". As the coordinators of the national SA leg of this competition, we received entries from around the country and offered a R2000 prize and free subscription of Archimedes for a year, one of our publications targeting high schools for the two winners. The two winners were Carike Bosman and Philip Mare, Grade 11's both from Eldoraigne High School in Pretoria.

As coodinators of this national event, we then sent through the two winning essays of the SA leg to the international part of the competition at UNESCO HQ in France. A high ranking panel of judges selected the winners of this part of the competition from a total of 290 entries, and to our surprise, Carike Bosman from Pretoria, won first prize! She won US$ 1000 and a round trip plane ticket to France and the Netherlands for two. She undertook this trip in October 2002 with her English teacher, Mrs Clarkeson, who encouraged her to enter. The highlight of their trip was the prize giving at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands on 7 October, right in the middle of World Space Week. Her school also won US$ 500 worth of UNESCO coupons and various other prizes.

There was a lot of media coverage and interest, including radio, TV and newspaper coverage. Space was very big in South Africa after the space flight of Mark Shuttleworth - the first African in space.

Cariek Bosman and Umberto Giodoni at the European Space Agency's facilities in Noordwijk, the Netherlands

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