‘Incredible opportunities’ for those with ideas, African innovator tells students
Ideas and innovation seem to pour out of Kelvin Doe like water out of a faucet.
It started in primary school when he would take paper and fashion it into fighter jets for him and his friends.
When he was just 10 years old, he scavenged electronics from the trash to make batteries because electricity in his hometown in Sierra Leone is so unreliable. By 13, he had built a generator and an FM transmitter so he could DJ his own community radio show.
Now a 23-year-old self-taught engineer, Doe has appeared on Tedxteen, spent time honing his craft at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and given motivational talks about recycling innovation.
The young inventor from West Africa was the keynote speaker at a one-day forum held to inspire students within the Windsor-essex Catholic District School Board to promote local and global change.
Since his talk at WE Day last week, Doe has travelled to nine local schools to share his story of perseverance and innovation, including Windsor’s St. Rose elementary school on Friday.
“My goal is always to find ways to support my mom and to share stories of the young people in Sierra Leone,” Doe said. “People that look like me and people from my community don’t always make it on mainstream news.
“I try to find how I can use this platform to tell stories of the people of Sierra Leone and to share my stories and let the kids know you can have an idea and you can become famous, you can become popular and you can have all these incredible opportunities.”
Doe and his four siblings were raised by a single mom in a two-bedroom home. He took over part of the family living room for his radio station. As part of a national innovation competition in high school, he invited local leaders and politicians to speak on air about the challenges faced in their community and possible solutions.
His project won the competition and led to his three-week stay at prestigious MIT.
Doe came to Canada in 2017 to finish high school at Great Lakes College in Toronto. He hopes to start university in the near future, all while developing the Kelvin Doe Foundation. The foundation’s goal, he said, is to “ignite innovation and inspire civic engagement” by providing creative “maker” spaces in Sierra Leone.
The students from Grades 5 and 6 who got to meet Doe Friday participate in St. Rose’s maker program known as “Creation Station.” They meet a few times a week in a room stocked with cardboard, toothpicks, Styrofoam, feathers, nuts and bolts, tinfoil and whatever else the school community has donated with free rein to create whatever strikes their fancy.
Eleven-year-old Sidney Burrell’s favourite creation so far has been a water piano upon which she successfully played the Hallelujah hymn.
“I also like working with robotics, it’s really interesting and you can make so many things with it,” Burrell said.
Vanessa Lavin, another 11-yearold Grade 6 student, created a whole story about a sparkle thief using Dash and Dot robots.
“I like how we can express our feelings with whatever we make,” Lavin said.
After Doe shared his story with the students and showed them how to make an electronic game out of household items, he spent time watching them work on their own recycled creations.