BACHAPAN BANAO

नमस्कार,
                   नागालँड मध्ये मध्ये विज्ञान शिबीर घेण्यासाठी गेलेली आणि दुर्गम भागातील विद्यार्थ्यासाठी गेल्या वर्षी ' युरेका ' मासिकसाठी नियमित लेखन करणारी प्रबोधिका ' कल्याणी कटारिया ' छत्तीसगड मधील दंतेवाडा जिल्ह्यात विज्ञान शिबीर घेण्यासाठी घेण्यासाठी  गेली होती.
 ( ब्लॉगवर  नागालँड शिबिराचे वृत्त आहे.)
                        दंतेवाडा जिल्ह्यात डॉ. राम गोडबोले काम करतात .मा. शांखिनी महिला उत्थान  केंन्द्राच्या माध्यमातून काम चालते. पुण्यातील आयसर् मधील विद्यार्थी ' बचपन बानाओ ' मोहिमेच्या माध्यमातून दंतेवाडा जिल्ह्यातील शाळांच्या  गुणवत्ता विकासासाठी वेळ आणि मदत या दोन्ही स्वरुपात योगदान देत आहेत. ज्ञान प्रबोधिनीचा युवक कार्यकर्ता कौस्तूभ देशपांडे या कामात पुढाकार घेत आहे. खालील मजकूर विज्ञान शिबिराचे अनुभव तसेच 'बचपन बानाओ' मोहोमेची माहिती सांगणारा आहे. अधिक माहितीसाठी कौस्तूभ देशपांडेशी  (९८२२५६५३८५ ) संपर्क करावा व http://bachpanbanao.wordpress.com/ या संकेत स्थळाला भेट द्यावी .

प्रशांत 

Dantewada Science Camp

Sugat & Kalnyani 

This is the main post about the science camp. I have written a few more related posts as well. If you enjoy reading this post, do read those posts, too.
It was a workshop of three days organized in a district library of Dantewada. Dantewada is highly Naxal prone area. The students lack all kind of exposure. The district administration of Dantewada has been very active in creating opportunities for the children to learn. ‘Bachpan Banao’ is a project that is being run by one of our friends, Pranith Simha in Dantewada. It is a project for improving standards of education for children of Dantewada. This camp was organized by Bachan Banao in coordination with the district administration. Kalyani and I, were facilitators for this workshop, came as volunteers from Pune.
There were 80 students of 9th standard were invited from 40 schools of various towns and villages of Dantewada. It was a large scale workshop, first of its kind. That gave us lot of freedom of introducing interesting and innovative stuff for students, but there was a big responsibility too.
Kalyani and I reached from Pune after a very long journey at previous night on 18th October. Our staying arrangement was at the district library itself.
The students were expected to reach on 18th evening itself. However, only 12 students were there on 18th. It was first such workshop by Bachpan Banao. All of us were quite apprehensive about student turn out. The exams were over and vacations were about to begin. I told Pranith at that night not to worry about how many students turn up and also added that we were extremely committed to make it a memorable and best learning experience for the students that came.
And now I can proudly say and Kalyani, Pranith and Nana (fellow of Bachpan Banao) would vouch of it that it indeed turned out to be best experience for the students as well as for us!
As there were less students and the program was to be inaugurated by the collector and CEO, we decided to postpone the inauguration to 12 noon. I was not sure how many students would come. But, as it was collector’s order, the students started coming and by 11-30 there, were more than 50 students. The venue was, science museum in the district library, Pranith has played a very important role in building the science museum and it has nice science exhibits.
As the students had started coming, we started taking them through the exhibits. At this point, we were completely unaware about their understanding of science. I tried to encourage them to talk, but they were very quiet. Some of them spoke a bit. We soon realized that their understanding of science was quite week. It was not unexpected, given lack of importance that had been given to their formal education.
For us the purpose of the workshop was clear.  We had no intention of boring them with formal, typical science stuff.The purpose was to get students excited about science, introduce them to basic principles of scientific thinking very informally and leave them with encouraged and excited about further education!
We started our session around 12-30 pm. Few more students were coming. As they came they joined the group. The session started with a song. We asked them what songs or prayers they new. Some of them mentioned ‘Itani Shakti Hame Dena Data’. It’s a beautiful song. We started the workshop with that song and then Kalyani also introduced them to one more song from the collection that she had got.
We started talking to the students. We asked them why they are there. Some knew, some were quite unaware. We told them one of the major part of this workshop is to have fun. We wanted them to start talking, get relaxed.
We started with demos of some of the science experiments that we had brought with us. These were mainly from Arvind Gupta’s Science Toys (Please google it, if you have not heard about it)  and from booklets on science created by Jnana Prabodhini, in Pune. Before we came to Dantewada, we had met Arvind Gupta Sir and Aditya Ponkshe from Vidnyandal of Jnana Prabodhini for their input for the workshop.
Kalyani conducted a demo experiment session about a balloon pump that is based on the principle of one-way valve. She is extremely good with experiments and engaging kids. I was interrupting in between to give relevant scientific information, like human heart having such valves in a simple language that kids would understand. The kids were highly engrossed.
The collector and CEO came. Both of them are very young, in their late 20s. They are highly dynamic. The inauguration function was very informal. The collector and CEO talked to the students. Students asked them questions and they responded. It was a perfect beginning!
After we came back from lunch, we conducted an ice-breaking activity for the students to mix with each other. It was based on numeric puzzle. Students enjoyed it and we had our four groups ready.
The workshop was full of activities based on Arvind Gupta’s toys that students did themselves in groups. There were competitions. We kept of telling them the scientific principles behind the toys as well. But, we did that a bit cleverly by asking them questions, and telling them in a way that they can understand.
Language was a bit barrier. None of us are extremely good in Hindi. The students are learning in Hindi and Hindi itself is a foreign language for them. But, we had openly told them about our limitations and they were very forthcoming.
The workshop was full of activities that students really enjoyed. They opened up and started talking. They were highly involved in the activities.
They helped each other in their groups. There was a nice spirit of camaraderie among them.

Balloon car was the first group activity. We told students a group wins if all the members of the group make functional balloon cars. They helped their team-members to build the cars. The group here named themselves as team ‘BMW’!
The three days had lot of indoor science activities, a few discussion sessions on science and few films and documentaries in the evening. We also screened the film ’3 idiots’ for them in the evening in two halves on the first two days. There were some maths puzzles and origami activities as well for students to enjoy.
The theoretical discussion sessions were also informal, We told students to ask questions in science that they find interested. We helped them to understand what are information based questions, what are scientific inquiry based questions, how they can go about finding answers to these questions and so on. We talked to them about importance of observations in science, demonstrated that through some of the string activities. In our demo experiments, we helped them in understanding the theoretical reasons behind those experiments  Students themselves suggested few more experiments to test their explanations. We conducted those experiments to validate their explanations.

On the last day, students made poster about what they learnt in the workshop and presented in front of the entire class. There was a quiz competition as well on the last day among the groups. A small project was also a part of this competition. The quiz questions were based on the concepts that they learnt in the camp, some questions were based on videos as well. The students participated with full enthu in the quiz competition. We congratulated all four group for their performance in the competitions and the students were also very supportive of each other.
Overall, it was a wonderful workshop that all of us enjoyed a lot. The next phase is to invite students in Pune in December for the next level workshop, preparation for which began in our train journey on the way back to Pune!


My overall experience was Dantewada trip was even more fascinating and writing about it is incomplete without mentioning Ram Godbole Sir and Sunita tai and our stay at their Ashram and a bike trip to Jagadalpur. But, more on that in a different post!