Bengaluru: Agastya International Foundation, a leading non-profit that makes quality education accessible to rural schools, has partnered with Verizon India for a well-calibrated Mobile Science Lab (MSL) for 20 schools that will benefit more than 2800 students in Arakkonam District, Tamil Nadu.
MSL is designed to boost STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education in locations away from cities. Its key objective is to enrich the learning of science with experiments and demonstrations for children from class 5-9 who have limited or no access to academic laboratories otherwise. The teaching approach is consistent with the National Curriculum Framework and the topics are aligned to the NCERT syllabus.
Salient Features of the Initiative
School visits: The MSL travels to each school with 100+ hands-on science models covering a wide range of topics in Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics.
Young Instructor Program: Students with a passion for science subjects will be trained to be “Young Instructors”; who will teach their peers.
Science Fairs: Will be held a few times a year to reach out to a larger group of children covering scientific phenomena and science in everyday life.
Teacher orientation programs: To instil and nurture creative thinking and problem-solving skills among teachers of participating schools.
The Mobile Science Lab was flagged off from the premises of Olympia Tech Park, Guindy by Kalyani Sekar, VP & MD, Verizon Data Services India in the presence of officials from Agastya and Sattva, a CSR advisory organization, besides a number of Verizon employees along with their leaders.
Commenting on the initiative, Hariharan, Director – Partner Relations, Agastya International Foundation said, “Agastya’s mission is to transform and reimagine education by sparking curiosity and creativity among underserved children in India. We are happy to partner with Verizon India to shape many young leaders, innovators and critical problem solvers through our programs.”
Launching the initiative, Kalyani Sekar said, “MSL is a transformational program that is well aligned with Verizon’s commitment to empowering communities. We hope the Mobile Science Lab in Arakkonam will help pull down barriers to effective learning and inspire hundreds of bright children to go far in pursuit of science education.”
