Drones in Disaster Management: Inspiring Future Innovators at Fairbreeze

David

10 September 2026

STEAM Education

I-Innovate brings the future of Drones in Disaster Management to Fairbreeze

For more than a decade, I-Innovate has worked to connect young people and communities with developments in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, robotics, artificial intelligence and other emerging fields.

The organisation’s work is grounded in the belief that exposure can change the direction of a young person’s life.

Young people cannot aspire towards opportunities they have never been allowed to see.

At Fairbreeze Secondary School, I-Innovate brought that philosophy directly into the community.

Representing I-Innovate, Shivar Rajoo introduced learners to the organisation’s work in STEM education and its commitment to ensuring that young people do not only hear about emerging technologies, but have opportunities to encounter them firsthand.

The initiative was hosted by Principal Crystal Pillay, whose leadership and support enabled the school to become a meeting point between education, community and industry.

Under her guidance, Fairbreeze Secondary School opened its grounds to an experience that placed advanced technology directly in front of learners who might otherwise have limited opportunities to engage with it.

For one day, the school became a gateway to the future.

A community shaped by adversity

The setting carried particular significance.

The Tongaat and Fairbreeze community has endured an extraordinary period of hardship. Severe flooding has displaced thousands of homes, lives have been lost, and a destructive tornado added another layer of devastation to communities already trying to rebuild.

Yet the story of the area is not only one of destruction.

It is also a story of resilience.

Neighbours helped neighbours. Communities mobilised food programmes. Educational materials were donated. Teachers, families and volunteers found ways to support children and elderly residents. Schools became more than places of learning. They became points of stability.

For Leonard Balakisten, founder of DroneLabs, returning to the community was deeply personal.

Born in and around the area, Leonard has watched a community that helped shape his own journey endure years of disruption. His return with DroneLabs gave learners the opportunity to see how technology could be applied to challenges that felt close to home.

I-Innovate recognised the importance of that connection.

The event was not designed as a technology display disconnected from the realities of the community. It was an opportunity to show learners that innovation can respond to real problems, including disaster management, environmental monitoring, infrastructure assessment and emergency response.

The role of drones in disaster management: More than a flying camera

For many young people, their first encounter with drones comes through social media, photography or videos filmed high above landscapes.

I-Innovate and DroneLabs wanted learners to see something much bigger.

The DroneLabs team demonstrated how unmanned aerial drones are already being applied across fields including agriculture, land surveying, environmental monitoring, infrastructure management, security, disaster response and water analysis.

Learners were introduced to drones capable of carrying LiDAR scanners, thermal imaging systems and specialised environmental sensors. They heard how drones can collect information about conditions that may be difficult or dangerous for people to assess from the ground.

They were also shown how artificial intelligence can help analyse what a drone sees in real-time.

Suddenly, STEM was no longer an abstract collection of school subjects.

Mathematics became flight calculations and mapping.

Engineering became aircraft design.

Computer science became artificial intelligence.

Environmental science became monitoring land and water.

Physics became the challenge of keeping an aircraft stable in the sky.

And technology became something capable of responding to real problems within their own communities.

For a region that knows what it means for roads to become inaccessible, homes to be damaged and emergency services to face difficult terrain, the implications were particularly powerful.

A thermal drone could potentially help search and rescue missions in areas that are difficult to access.

An aircraft could survey damaged infrastructure without immediately placing a person in danger.

Specialised drones equipped with supplies could be used in disaster areas that vehicles struggle to reach.

The technology being demonstrated at Fairbreeze was not about some distant version of the future.

The potential of drones to address real-world challenges was evident just outside the school gates.

Then the questions started

Perhaps one of the most significant parts of the programme was what happened when the formal presentation gave way to questions.

Initially, learners wanted to understand the careers.

How does someone become a drone pilot?

What qualifications are required?

How long does training take?

How much can a professional pilot earn?

The DroneLabs team introduced learners to professional pathways within the industry, including remotely piloted aircraft certification and specialist training that can allow pilots to conduct more advanced operations.

But then the questions changed.

Learners stopped asking only how they could enter the industry and started asking how they could change it.

Could solar panels be incorporated into a drone?

Could batteries be designed differently so that aircraft remain operational for longer?

Could batteries be replaced or recharged without repeatedly returning the drone to its starting point?

Could more advanced artificial intelligence models make drones smarter?

Could drones fly further?

Could drones respond to disaster emergencies faster?

These were the questions that caught the attention of both the I-Innovate and DroneLabs teams.

Because in that moment, the learners were no longer simply watching technology.

They were designing its next generation in their minds.

That curiosity is precisely what I-Innovate seeks to unlock.

The aim of STEM engagement is not simply to show a learner something impressive. It is to create the moment in which that learner begins asking, What if I could make this better?

South African drone technology takes centre stage

Among the aircraft demonstrated was a particularly significant piece of technology for aspiring engineers.

While many sophisticated drone systems and components originate internationally, the DroneLabs team also showcased an advanced multi-payload drone developed in Cape Town.

For learners, its presence carried another message.

Advanced technology does not have to come from somewhere else.

South Africans can build it.

South Africans can engineer it.

South Africans can improve it.

And young people sitting in classrooms in Tongaat today can become part of the industry tomorrow.

The event also highlighted the creative use of drone technology.

As STEM increasingly expands into STEAM, drones play a crucial role at the intersection of technology and creativity. They are changing photography, filmmaking, mapping and the ways people visualise landscapes and environments.

The same aircraft capable of surveying infrastructure can produce extraordinary aerial imagery.

The same engineering that enables scientific data collection can create an entirely new artistic perspective.

Stepping inside the emergency response command centre

Then came one of the day’s defining moments.

Learners were invited inside DroneLabs’ mobile drone command centre.

From the outside, it was a specialised vehicle.

Inside, it looked like something from a film.

Screens surrounded the learners.

Live aerial feeds showed the world from above. Other displays presented different layers of information and analysis. Thermal imagery translated heat into visible data. Artificial intelligence systems demonstrated how objects and people could be identified from the air for search and rescue operations.

For learners who had spent the morning hearing about what drones in disaster management could do, the technology was suddenly operating directly in front of them.

Some were even given the opportunity to interact with the command system as a drone was deployed and began surveying the surrounding area.

The school grounds they knew so well looked completely different from above.

And with each screen, sensor and piece of information, another possible career came into view.

Pilot.

Engineer.

Programmer.

Data analyst.

Surveyor.

Environmental scientist.

Technician.

AI specialist.

Entrepreneur.

From a place that experienced disaster to a place preparing for it

The significance of the day extended beyond the drones themselves.

For I-Innovate, the event demonstrated the organisation’s commitment to taking STEAM education beyond traditional classrooms and into communities where exposure to emerging technology can have a lasting impact.

For Shivar Rajoo, representing I-Innovate, the programme was an opportunity to connect learners with practical examples of how science and technology can be used to address real-world challenges.

For Principal Crystal Pillay, Fairbreeze Secondary School became the host of an experience that connected learners, educators, industry specialists and community stakeholders.

For Leonard Balakisten, the event represented a return to the community that had contributed to his own journey.

For Joylene Balakisten, CEO of DroneLabs, and the wider DroneLabs team, it was an opportunity to place highly specialised technology directly in front of young people who might otherwise never have the opportunity to engage with it.

Perhaps the most important outcome of the event, however, may only become visible years from now.

Somewhere among the learners standing on the Fairbreeze Secondary School grounds may have been a future drone pilot.

A robotics engineer.

An environmental scientist.

An artificial intelligence developer.

Or perhaps a young person who will invent a technology nobody at the event has imagined yet.

That is what made the day in Fairbreeze significant.

A community that had become familiar with stories of floods, destruction and rebuilding became, for a moment, the setting for a very different story.

One about technology.

One about opportunity.

One about young South Africans seeing sophisticated equipment operating in their own community and realising that they could one day be the people operating it, designing it and improving it.

And perhaps, one day, using it to protect the same communities that raised them.

Through I-Innovate’s leadership, Principal Crystal Pillay’s hosting of the programme, and the collaboration with DroneLabs, Leonard and Joylene Balakisten and the Fairbreeze Secondary School community, the future did not arrive in Tongaat as an idea.

It flew above the school grounds.

Category :

STEAM Education