Kutoohal: Science camp for kids

A lack of quality education is the root cause of several major social issues globally, particularly in developing countries like India. I feel strongly that good quality education should be accessible to every child irrespective of their social backgrounds. The same opinion is shared by my friends and as a small contribution towards addressing education inequity, we conducted a science camp for rural kids in the village of Siddhatek, (Dist: Pune). The following article gives the detail of our first camp. It is written by one of my dear friend Indrajeet who was also part of the team which conducted the workshop.

The idea of conducting a science camp for children in Siddhtek, a scenic village on the bank of the river Bhima, had formulated some time ago in our good friend Nalini Gurav’s mind. Being a localite, she was really distressed by the unevenness of the resources available for urban and rural students and the adverse effect that dogmatic, conservative, religious atmosphere of Siddhtek was having on the scientific temperament of children and adults alike. This is not surprising given that the place hosts one of the Ashtavinayakas, a holy place for all the devotees of Lord Ganesha. Having studied science in Pune, Nalini could not help but put finger on the stark differences between the ways science is taught in Siddhtek and Pune. Having previously participated in science camp for children few years ago, she knew how such camps can change a student’s perception of doing science and thus she decided to do the same thing in Siddhtek. We were glad to hear her proposal and agreed at once to come.

After a memorable, Swades-like journey, we reached Siddhtek on Friday (15th) and were glad to pump some fresh air into our dust-ridden lungs and to enjoy the peaceful sunset, unimpeded and unstained by skyscrapers and traffic. After having delicious home-made food at Nalihi’s place, we sat down and prepared for talks and other activities that we had decided to conduct the next day. Our team included: Nalini, Mukul, Sandesh, Anagha, Harshada, Madhuri, Ashwini, Archana, Vijay, Abhilash, and I.

The camp started the next day (16th) at 10am. The camp was named Kutoohal, meaning curiosity in Marathi. And that’s what we hoped to do: to make them curious about science, about nature, about how things work. So I started the day with a short talk on what is science and how and why we need to do it. There were around 100 to 120 students from classes ranging from 4^th to 10^th, a daunting diversity of age-groups! Next Mukul explained history of earth with his newfound confidence in Marathi! We had got a projector and prepared power point presentations full of pictures and animations, which made it easy for us to maintain their attention, a difficult thing to do really. Next, Anagha conducted crafts session, in which she taught students to prepare different types of artefacts from paper. There wasn’t a single student who did not participate in the activity! Those who had trouble doing it were helped out by all other didis!

After this, students were given a lunch break and told to reassemble at 3pm and we were astounded by their punctuality. The number did not wane, in fact, it increased, which showed how excited they were of the whole thing. We started the afternoon session with quiz, asking questions that they would usually not encounter in their class-rooms or exams. We were really impressed by some of the students. Every kid tried his/her best to answer question, given that the prize for right answer was a pack of cream biscuits! After quiz, Harshada explained a bit about computers and what can we use them for. Next I talked about the diversity amongst living things and was really amazed that they had heard about animals like Dodo and Komodo dragons, maybe Discovery or Nat Geo-effect. With this ended the afternoon session.

The evening session was targeted at adults, though kids were there too. It started at 6pm with Sandesh’s beautiful talk on how big the universe is. Kids to their parents everybody saw in amazement as he moved from one slide to the next taking them virtually through the astronomical tour. With that done, I gave a talk on how astrology is not a science, but a pure hokum. I am not sure if they were convinced, but I surely made them suspicious about it. A ppt in Marathi surely helped with presentation.

Last activity and piece de resistance was sky-watching. Though it was a bit cloudy, we did manage to have a good look at moon. Everyone really enjoyed it and kept asking questions, which showed how much they wanted to know about astronomy. We had a 4-year old who literally saw moon more than 20 times and still wanted more!

I, on behalf of the rest of the team, would really like to thank Nalini and her entire family who worked so hard to make our stay comfortable and gave us an opportunity to do something good. We are surely going to remember this day for a very long time. With this experience in hand, we would like to conduct such science camps in remote villages of Maharashtra in future.

On behalf of the entire team I would like to express special thanks to Mr Sameer Onkar, V.G.Bhide Science Center, University of Pune for providing us the projector and Miss Kalyani Date, Department of Physics, University of Pune for the telescope.

Readers are requested to please provide your valuable comments and suggestions, to help us improve the quality of the program in the future.