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Bright student Hemangini Raina is hoping to foster innovation and critical thinking within her school’s culture by launching a new science initiative, writes Kristian Harrison.
The 18 year-old GulfWeekly Youth Talk columnist is bringing ‘Innov8’ to St Christopher’s School, a programme for students aged 11 to 15 which aims to encourage innovation from the forward-thinking yet voiceless demographic.
She explains: “In this programme, we’ll be challenging the scientific status quo, as it stands, by providing a platform for younger students to share their ideas and start a chain reaction of creation. Innov8 will allow students to think outside the box, and come up with their suggestions and research on areas that are critical for human survival.
“For example, the first theme Innov8 will cover is ‘water provision’, so students will be researching and creating ways to improve clean water access to the 750 million people in the world who currently don’t have access to clean water. The ideas could possibly range from a simple concept of improving the desalination of sea water, to more efficient methods of waste water recycling to condensation from atmospheric humidity.”
Once a theme is presented to students, they then have eight weeks to research the subject and come up with their own ideas. They must then present their findings via a medium of their choice, such as a report, presentation or model.
After the submission period is over, a panel of older students in Years 12 and 13 (ages 16 to 18) will shortlist the submissions, and then three science teachers, one each from the biology, chemistry and physics disciplines, will choose the top three entries. These three students will then be rewarded with a certificate by the senior management team in the school assembly.
This is not the first creative project Hemangini has started at St Christopher’s, after the successful run of her ‘ScienceBusters’ class which started last year.
She said: “ScienceBusters was really fun. A couple of my friends and I gave interactive presentations on practical and unusual applications of science. It was essentially a way to foster an interest in science within the younger students in the school community, so we looked at cool concepts such as the possibility of alien life, hydrogen bombs and the practicality of superpowers.
“Innov8 is a subsidiary of ScienceBusters, and it was a natural progression for the programme, since students showed an active interest in becoming more active in problem-solving and applying their knowledge to a real-life context. It is a given fact that the younger generation is the key to solving future (and current) crises, and encouraging them to think seriously about the problems we face is essential to our progress.
“One of the best things about Innov8 is that it is completely open-ended. You can present an abstract concept that could potentially be implemented far into the future, or an improvement to a current solution. I think it is this degree of freedom that the students will really enjoy, because the opportunity to get creative, get your hands dirty and not worry about the finesse in presentation is really liberating.”
Hemangini, who has lived in Bahrain for nine years, resides in Tubli with her businessman father Rohit and bank worker mother Anita, along with sister Divya, 13.
Although in her last year of study at the school, she has a long-term plan for Innov8 that includes covering a wide range of subjects such as food provision, global warming, sanitation and, in her own words, ‘many more similar problems that, if left unattended, can irrevocably harm our civilization in the decades to come’.
She plans to use the Innov8 programme as a stepping stone to a career in the field, with her main aim to become a social entrepreneur and run her own business while aiding members of developing countries to create their own micro-businesses, thus stimulating local economies. Furthermore, she has a life goal of addressing the world’s gender disparity, by improving women’s access to education in the developing world.
