Outreach
I have been active in science education and outreach with audience at different levels and of different background since about ten years.
During the university studies, I have been maths-busking on the streets a part of a group of volunteers called Pi Rates, as well as science festivals (for instance in Dublin in occasion of Maths Week Ireland), and running open topology labs in the bars of Bologna (IT, my home town).
Over the last 5 years I got involved with SAMI ‘Supporting African Mathematical Initiatives’, of which I am currently one of the Directors.
SAMI is a UK based charity with the goal to address the huge divide in terms of access to and quality of education across Africa, supporting many local initiatives with the goal to provide expertise and funding and sustain and scale these ideas.
SAMI stands for Supporting AMI 'African Mathematical Initiative', a Kenya and Ghana-based organisation with similar goals which promotes several projects at the local level. SAMI supports for instance the Digital Community Initiative and the African Data Initiative.
One of SAMI's biggest projects is to support at different levels maths camps for local high school students and their teachers. The maths camps promote in a fun way problem solving and critical thinking skills, in a gender equal environment, through advanced topics made accessible, such as geometry, topology, algebra, programming, epidemiology, cryptography and experimental physics.
Since its foundation in 2011, SAMI has run 29 maths camps in Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Togo, and Benin, for a total of 1607 students (about 800 girls and 800 boys), 342 local volunteers and 174 international volunteers (the big majority from Europe). I have volunteered in maths camps in most of the countries above, taken responsability roles, assisted local programs of training for high school science teachers, and facilitated many European science researchers to participate in their first African mathcamp as volunteers.
In response to the Covid19 pandemic we developed Virtual Maths Camp, an open-access pre-downloadable maths educational repository with pause-and-go video sessions, an interactive Chatbot for Whattsapp and Telegram, an interactive app, and card decks with maths puzzles soon to be shipped. This material will be delivered by local organisers and a network of high school teachers (see reports).
