The call for applications for the ‘Endeavour’ competition organised by the Al Worden Endeavour Scholarship Foundation will run until 30 November 2023. The partners of the Polish version include the Kielce Trade Fair and the Polish Space Agency. For the first time in Poland, the scholarship programme is to select four young people (aged 15 to 18) to take part in training at the Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, in the United States.
The Endeavour Scholarship is an international initiative that encourages young people to pursue careers: scientists, engineers, and explorers. It has been awarded since 2019. So far, students from the US, UK, France, Chile, Singapore, Australia, and Bahrain have participated in the programme. This year, Poles have also been given such an opportunity. Four representatives of our country will be selected from among the applications, who will be trained by the best specialists in the space industry.
The week-long training will take place in July 2024 at the Space and Rocket Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. It is worth mentioning that more than 900,000 people have so far been trained at the US training centre, several of whom have become astronauts.
The programme was initiated by Colonel Alfred Worden – astronaut, crew member of the Apollo 15 mission that landed on the surface of the Moon in 1971, and a worldwide advocate of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education.
The aim of the programme is to arouse interest in science among young people, to point out the interdisciplinarity of the space industry and to encourage people to take up employment in the Polish space sector.
The competition task is to prepare a maximum 2-minute film in which the student presents the subject of their research, a scientific problem, an ongoing project, or an area of interest.
Participants can submit their works in one of two categories of scientific and non-scientific character. The scientific category covers the fields of science, engineering sciences, and the non-scientific category covers the humanities, arts and culture and sports.
Adrian Andrzejewski