JOIN USScience took centre stage on the fourth day of the ongoing ‘Indo-German Urban Mela’. It was the turn of the Youth University to make way for high school children to showcase their talent with the help of science.
By afternoon, the pavilions were packed with students, teachers and families with little children running around the place.
The cultural pavilion saw ‘Science Slam’, where participants had to make presentations on issues and problems faced by urban cities. Topics ranged from solar cooking, carbon footprints to even public transport. Interestingly, the participants had some unique ways of solving these issues.
Amogha Ravindra, a ninth standard student from Vidya Niketan School, spoke about the difficulties in getting around the City in a bus. Amogha had a solution to this problem. She felt colour-coding the entire City and the buses would help any newcomer touring the City. “My personal experience of trying to find the right bus each time I had to travel made me think of this idea and this was ideal platform for me to share this idea,” she says.
And this was exactly the intention behind this competition. Anne Renate Schoenhagen, deputy director and head of the language department, says, “All these days the children have been interacting with the so many professors and teachers from Germany at the Youth University. Today we wanted to bring the youth on the stage and allow them to share their views as well.”
But what was missing at the competition was the humour. With ‘Science Slam’ meant to take a quirky and a humourous take on the issue, most of the participants gave very in-depth and serious presentations. “Children these days do tend to take science very seriously. But we were impressed with the kind of topics high school children could come up with. This definitely raises the bar for the college kids who will be taking part later during the week,” she adds.
The energy and excitement continued as Indian and German clowns took to the grounds and played harmless pranks on visitors. The sudden showers didn’t dampen the spirit of the young dancers who were eagerly waiting for the hip-hop and B-boying workshop by Niel Storm to start.
Pavithra, a student who recently passed her second PUC, also attended the workshop. She says, “I was always interested in learning about this dance form. It was a real challenge but Storm really made it look easy on stage.”
With many more events designed to attract the young crowd, the ‘mela’ is slowly becoming quite an attraction.