As the bells rang for lunch break at the Municipal Corporation School, Sriharipuram, a curious bunch of students were the first to spot the yellow bus entering the school premises. Soon, the crowd swelled and students lined-up peering through the bus in expectation of the magic to begin. This was one of the mobile science labs of Agastya International Foundation that had come to the school to add a dash of excitement to their otherwise mundane school lessons.
For the children, of course, it meant something else - the bus was their medium to dream big. They were excited for the children had never before seen the chapters from their textbooks come alive through various scientific models and concepts.
It was during one of the school visits of this yellow bus that L. Niharika first saw how tiny micro-organisms thrive under a microscope. A student of class 9, GVMC High School Sriharipuram, Niharika was thrilled to see a whole new world of micro-organisms which the naked eye could never spot. “I had read about it in the textbooks, but never understood what it meant till I saw this,” says the 12-year-old. Niharika lost her parents at an early age and now lives with her uncle’s family who are daily wage labourers. M. Sai, a student of class 7 of GVMC Madhavadhara, appears equally excited as he narrates his first scientific experiment with the plasma ball. “It looked like bolts of electricity that stretch from a central orb to the place where your fingers touch the glass. It felt like as if I have made my own personal bolt of lightning,” says the 10-year-old. Sai, whose father is a mason labourer, dreams of becoming a scientist. Quiz him about how the plasma ball exactly works and pat comes his reply: “It is a clear glass ball filled with a mixture of noble gases with a high-voltage electrode at its centre.” “Plasma filaments extend from the electrode to the glass when electricity is supplied, generating these beams of coloured light,” he says triumphantly.
Far from the monotony of theoretical science classes, several students of the municipal corporation and Zilla Parishad schools in Visakhapatnam, Srikakulam and neighbouring areas of Andhra Pradesh are now enjoying science through activity-based learning concepts, thanks to Agastya International Foundation. Like Niharika and Sai, over eight million students from economically backward families across the country have benefited through the Foundation’s initiatives over the past decade or so. In Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam, mobile labs carrying science models like hyperbolic slot, momentum machine and human anatomy along with equipments for experiments reach out to around 50 schools. The classrooms soon turn into an exciting world of science laboratory where the students learn the science lessons by experiencing it. K. Balaram, senior manager of the foundation says each mobile science lab or bus carries around 120 science models or concepts covering a wide range of topics in physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy.
The mobile science labs are only a small side of the educational revolution that is being spearheaded by Agastya in AP and other states. Its epicentre is at Kuppam in Andhra Pradesh where lies the Agastya’s 172-acre campus creativity lab - a world centre for experiential learning integrating across science, arts and humanities disciplines.
“The main objective of starting the Foundation was to fill a critical gap in education, namely, the absence of a spirit of curiosity and creativity in Indian schools, which follow a rote-based system discouraging questioning and was obsessively marks and exam focused. Further, schools lacked hands-on opportunities for learning like science and art labs and teacher training was divorced from the realities of the school classroom. Among the underprivileged sections, this led to school dropouts and unemployable youth who were left out of the mainstream, creating a social, intellectual and economic chasm between the rich and poor,” says Ramji Raghavan founder and chairman of the Bangalore-based non-profit educational trust. It was with this idea to spark curiosity, nurture creativity and instil confidence in underprivileged children and government school teachers through hands-on, experiential learning that Agastya International Foundation was formed.
At its Kuppam campus, more than 600 underprivileged children daily visit free of cost and over 2,000 teachers from AP, Maharashtra, Odisha, Karnataka undergo residential training every year in its high quality hands-on training and exposure programmes in science, art and ecology. Andhra Pradesh represents Agastya’s largest investment in education. “Besides the Kuppam campus, Agastya operates four mobile science labs in Visakapatnam and Srikakulam, four lab-on-bikes in Chittoor district and two science centres in Chittoor and Kuppam town. In AP alone, our total reach is around 30,000 children per annum,” explains Raghavan. Most of the children of the schools that Agastya reaches out to are typically from family of farmers or agricultural labourers. If the rains fail or during the months when they do not work in the fields, the families head to the cities to work as construction labourers.
The educational programmes of Agastya have an exciting twist for the students. Its Young Instructor Leader programme has been a game-changer for many young minds who did not have the means and scope to explore various learning methods before Agastya came into their lives. Through this programme, children who show exceptional ability to learn are trained by the foundation and in turn teach science to other children. Today, many of these young leaders have brought about a social change in their communities by addressing civic and social issues like cleanliness, hygiene and alcoholism. The foundation has over 10,000 Young Instructor Leaders (in the age group of 13 to 16 years) spread over the country today. Fifteen years after it started, Agastya has spread its wings across 18 States in India including Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Bihar, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Odisha. Annually Agastya reaches 1.5 million children and 25,000 teachers directly.
Given the scale of operations, Agastya’s annual budget comes to around Rs 40 crores. One of its biggest individual sponsors is Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, investor and philanthropist and corporates like including HDFC, Honeywell, L&T, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America.
Ramji adds: “The ultimate aim of Agastya is to make a creative India of explorers, solution-seekers and creators, who are humane, anchored and connected. And this can be achieved by bringing about a reform in the educational system, especially for the underprivileged section.”
