QUEEN’S ROAD:Parikrma Humanity Foundation is organising the first ever Parikrma Festival of Science at the University of Agricultural Sciences (GKVK) till Friday. Former President of India, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam inaugurated the festival at a special ceremony held at the Indian Institute of Sciences on Monday.
Over 200 children from across 20 schools are participating in the five-day event. The festival aims to foster collaborative rather than competitive discovery among school children and help them explore the role of science in everyday life in a fun way. With the hope of creating a platform for larger discussions on science and society, the management wishes to make this an annual festival that reaches out to schools across the city.
The theme of this year’s festival is water, and the programme will have participants engaging with BWSSB authorities as well as experts and scientists like Anjum Parwez, Rajendra Singh, Ravi Narayanan among others. Other activities include a field trip to Jakkur Lake and the study of water conservation, a water audit, water quality testing, a visit to Sewage Treatment Plants and understanding waste water generation, rainwater harvesting, government laws and more.
The primary purpose is to support a multi-disciplinary and critically engaged learning process. As socially engaged scientists, children will record their reflections in the form of a memorandum and share their ideas with water user groups across the city. Shukla Bose, founder and CEO, Parikrma Humanity Foundation, says, “Parikrma has been running schools for 12 years and we have learnt that science cannot be taught, it is to be experienced. Schools today have reduced science to subjects and prepare children for exams. We wanted to create an environment where children can learn in a collaborative manner by interacting with eminent scientists. We have experts like Dr Balaram from IISC and Prof Chandrasekhar working with the children at the festival.”
Adds she, “An immediate outcome of 2015 science festival will be an exposition of their findings, experiment results and experience. We hope the students, whom we call apprentice scientists, will in these five days learn that they can play a role in reviewing their impact on the society. We want them to learn that much can be done if we work collaboratively with others, irrespective of their economic and social backgrounds.” To know more about Parikrma, log on to http://parikrmafoundation.org