Jaco Botha

When I was 8 years old, my brother and I built our own tree house in the backyard. I soon discovered, after falling out off the tree house, the importance of structural integrity. By the age of 12, I was moving my way up from helping my father with wood projects to trying a bit of electrical work. Needless to say, laying on my back again, I realised the importance of safety when it comes to working with electricity (and just to point out my father did warn me and show me the correct ways, but I did not listen.) I’m still too afraid to try anything with mechanical parts!

My trophy was designed with those memories in my head, and thinking of the importance of everything around us. The base represents the foundation, the triangles represent structural integrity, the curly bit around it represents electrical currents and the top piece represents dreams. In essence, it tells a story: build a good foundation with education, have strong, hard beliefs and integrity, learn new things every day to move faster through life and you will reach your dreams.