Prayogwan’s bid to create young scientists

NAGPUR: Educational organization ‘Prayogwan’ will train science teachers and students of Nagpur to encourage them to participate in National Children’s Science Congress (NCSC) — a national-level science competition.

“Nagpur holds very less activities related to science, English and Math for schools students,” said Trupti Pattil, founder and director of Prayogwan in a press conference, held here on Wednesday. “We are targeting kids from backward areas who get less chance to come forward for such activities,” she said.

The competition will have a district-level elimination. After that the students will compete at state-level and at last national-level. NSCS conducted 650 projects last year out of which 30 were from all over Maharashtra and only two from Vidarbha region.

Prayogwan is eyeing 480 schools, including government and private ones. Twenty extraordinary teachers from Vidarbha, who want to excel in the field of science besides their regular routine, have been selected for the training of the programme. These teachers will be trained on how to prepare the students for the prestigious contest and how to make teaching innovative and easy to understand for the young scientists. Schools will be provided with the soft copies of the notes required for the training of the students.

“Children like science but are afraid of the subject because of the education system that focuses only on the repetitive pattern,” said Hemant Pande, NCERT chief.

“Sometimes, the students have technical difficulties or some don’t even have the access to the equipment needed for such activities. Our organization will provide them with all the help they need,” added Pande.

(Reporting by Tejas Mundhada)