Many years ago, I stumbled upon an article in the Economic Times about Dr Arvind Gupta (We make science fun to learn). Googling, I reached his website that had me amazed. Dr Arvind Gupta has also spoken on Turning trash into toys for learning on TED. After a phone call, Dr Gupta promptly couriered me a DVD (for just the cost of the media and postage) that replicated his website content, which we were free to replicate and distribute.
Distributing the DVD to schools was fun. This was done by the wonderful Rotarians from Rotary Club of Dabolim Goa – presidents Dinesh Heda, Avez Mohidin, Shubhangi Lotlikar, Amit Tapadia and Charuta Mehta. Big help from Anil Kher CII and Deepak Khaitan Sunshine School Goa. Later, when one of my Rotary club members visited a nearby school, we realized that simply donating CDs will not help. Adoption rates by either students or teachers in most schools will be very low. So we decided to have an exhibition where children would showcase Toys made of, you guessed it, trash. Working models, instead of plain vanilla static models. This desire to compete made more and more schools adopt and use the DVD. In subsequent years, the competitive spirit helped them improve.
Three Science Exhibitions (2010 – 2012 – 2014) later, people are actually looking forward to the event. Some schools have held their own intra-school competitions. The exhibitions have been conducted by the excellent work by Rotary Club of Dabolim Goa.
Will these students understand science better ? Will some of them become inventors ? Will some of them change the world ?
Join in from wherever you are int he world for the next event – if you love children, education and want to be a part of the solution, lets talk. Lets be the change :-)
