Help Children Access Hands -On Science Education

Agastya International runs one of the world's largest mobile hands-on science education program for economically disadvantaged children and teachers. Through all its programs, Agastya has reached over 12 million children and 2,50,000 teachers in 21 states across India. By making practical, hands-on science education accessible to rural government schools, Agastya aims to transform and stimulate the thinking of underprivileged children and teachers through the outreach methods.

Through innovative core programs Agastya ignites that initial spark of curiosity in a child. This occurs in our labs, where teachers trained in our hands-on method excite students about science, art, and mathematics. While certain programs support the teachers, and others assist remedial students and dropouts, all are surrounded by the ecology classroom on our Kuppam campus.

Using experiential and hands-on, child-centric learning, teacher education and scalable methods, Agastya aims to bring about a shift in five vital behaviours (below) through highly innovative and effective outreach channels.‘Yes to Why’, ‘Looking to Observing’, ‘Passiveness to Exploring’, ‘Text-book to Hands-on’, ‘Fear to Confidence’

The objectives of programs is

1. Increase access to practical, hands-on Science and Digital literacy for economically disadvantaged government school children.
2. To Spark Curiosity, Creativity and build leadership among underprivileged children of India.
3. Train teachers from government schools in hands-on pedagogy.
4. To supplement Government School system with experiential science learning.
5. Introduce peer to peer teaching/learning methodology.

Programs will additionally conduct the following  activities:

• Teacher Training: Teachers will be trained with an aim to disseminate knowledge and propagate creative-thinking and problem-solving skills among government school teachers.
• Science Fairs and Summer Camps in which Young Instructors will be identified and trained to demonstrate science concepts to their peers through peer-to-peer learning. This facilitates greater interaction and understanding of concepts, boosts confidence and improves communication skills.
• This program helps to catalyse local schools and educators and improve the quality of education for rural/ municipal children and teachers.
• Internalization and rapid dissemination of hands-on science into the school system and creation of a model for replication.
• Significantly improves the classroom learning environment – better and more productive student-teacher interaction, more hands-on learning opportunities with improved overall learning and understanding of concepts.

Links:

• Spirit of Agastya-Abridged Documentary
• Agastya International Foundation
• Agastya kuppam campus - Lab and books for children