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OVERVIEW
Human practice forms an essential element, of any project; it helps in bringing the project in open, among the common masses. Thereby shaping the project in sync with needs and requirement of general people, who will be directly or indirectly affected by the implementation of the project.
Since our project deals with the issue of heavy metal toxicity in rivers; water of which is constantly used for agriculture and irrigation practices ; thus, our engagement and outreach basically focused on
"INDUSTRIES AND INDUSTRIAL OWNERS"
To assess =>
- To identify sources of heavy metal discharge.
- Level of heavy metals in discharged water.
- Steps and measures taken by individual industries to cope with heavy metal toxicity.
"AGRICULTURAL LANDS AND FARMS"
To monitor =>
- Quality of water used for agricultural purposes.
- Effect of toxic water on the yield (vegetable-fruits)
- Their problems and issues.
Apart from this , our reach-out also focused on creating awareness about synthetic biology among the school and college students; thereby igniting young minds ; with the concepts and vastness of this field.
We also took an initiative, to create large scale awareness about heavy-metal toxicity and its related affects among common people ; by creating numerous surveys, questioners, and forms(Google-forms) ; which circulated through various modes including both offline and online.
VISIT TO LOCAL SCHOOLS (REGION DELHI)
Our first outreach initiative, was a visit to two local schools in Rk Puram sector (New Delhi)
- Hose Marty Sarvodaya Vidyalaya
- Govt.Co.ed Sarvodaya Vidyalaya
On this visit, we engaged in an interactive talk sessions, with students of 11th and 12th grade. The talk highlighted the concept of synthetic biology; and a brief discussion about our project and its relevance. Interactions were also made, to make students understand the iGEM competition, and thus encouraging them to participate in the coming years.
The talk sessions in both the schools lasted up to 1-2 hrs. , at the end of which each student was provided with a questioner which dealt every basic and simple questions on synthetic biology , iGEM ; and a column to share their experience and views on this session. Our questioner also highlighted a question-: "DO YOU WANT TO BECOME A SYNTHETIC BIOLOGIST IN FUTURE?" to which we got some really heartwarming answers like
- Yes...I want to become a synthetic biologist; so that I can make my country feel proud!!
- Yes...I want to become a synthetic biologist; so that I can make a human with powers of superman & Batman!!
VISIT TO KENDRIYA VIDYALAYA (Region-Agra)
Our next outreach session ; was at K.V in the ''Air force" area of Agra; where we interacted with senior-secondary students ; understanding their views on pollution of river "Yamuna", and their thoughts on heavy metals and their toxicity. Through this talk, we discussed about varied concept of synthetic-biology ; and it can be used to tackle the issues of heavy-metal toxicity in our rivers ; the main highlight of this session were the various, videos we showed on iGEM and synthetic biology ( collected from iGEM site YouTube); we gained students interest in this field. A questioner was distributed at the end of this session; through which we could analyze the impact of our talk; on those young minds.