TSWREIS schools to include innovation in curriculum

Hyderabad: Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS), along with Inqui-lab, is all set to introduce innovation as a curriculum subject in 15 government residential schools across the city from this academic year, namely 'Inqui-lab Young Innovators Program.'

Out of the 50 residential schools, 15 have been shortlisted to run this pilot project. The project is to start with 8th grade students and the future projects will focus on other grades also. Each class will have 40 students and each grade around 150 students. The students will have to form a group of three and work on three different units of a project in a year. The students have to come up with unique innovations like water can wash basin, coconut shell glass and mugs, solar cooling helmet, and egg tray protector.

"We are specifically working with the innovative abilities of the students, for they should be able to give ideas and test them by making a prototype. The TSWREIS has 50 residential schools, and out of which, 15 schools are chosen for the pilot project. We have been working with government and private schools since 2016, but we were working in a model where if we go and do it ourselves it will be challenging, as we have a team of seven to eight people. However, we are trying out different modes of implementation by training students and Yuva Varadhi, another NGO, to partner with us in the program," said Eshwar Bandi, cofounder at Inqui-Lab.

"Earlier, we ran a similar project where we were given five residential schools by the TSWREIS, where each student had to present one unit of a project in a year. Considering the children's work, we thought of introducing this as a curriculum subject in these schools that can take ownership of the program and students can come up with new innovation, which they can later apply for patents and work on," said Sahithya Anumolu, co-founder Inqui-Lab.

Supply of all study material is provided by TSWREIS and Inqui-Lab. Apart from that the materials that is relevant to the idea, such as basic electronic materials, joining materials for them to make their prototype. It might be a representative model or working prototype based on the availability of the materials for the project. They received a grant of Rs 16.5 lakh in March 2019 from Salesforce, which is a US-based company, as funding for the 'Inqui-lab Young Innovators Program.'