~Andres Tapia
Being inclusive is to ensure that people with diverse backgrounds and identities end up becoming part of our endeavor through the means of active engagement via any medium of communication.
Education
The activity book
Amongst many things, education has been one of our primary focuses during our iGEM journey, more on which you can explore on our Education page!
Being from India, a country consisting of a huge diversity of communities with different linguistic backgrounds, we have taken special consideration of the importance of language in our means of engaging with the society. In the light of this, we have devised an activity book (has been attached as a PDF below) consisting of various activities such as puzzles, connecting dots etc, with attractive illustrations and narratives pertaining to our project and the underlying concepts. It is meant for educating children aged 4-9 years as is stated on the third page of the book.
In the spirit of being inclusive, we have translated all of the content of the activity book into Kannada and Malayalam, as you may find out in the ‘Sant Tukaram School’ section of our Education page. These are languages which are native to southern India. We believe that this will dramatically increase the accessibility of our activity book since we have found that these languages are very common as primary languages of instruction in many schools in southern India. Moreover, as a part of our efforts to directly engage with the society using the activity book, we reached out to Sant Tukaram School, in Pune, the city where our institute is located. During our visit to this school, our medium of instructions was Hindi and Marathi, languages that are native to Pune. This was done to ensure that what we were trying to convey was being properly understood, without any linguistic barriers.
Additionally, in devising the activity book, we have given special consideration to the prospect of it being used by underpriviledged and economically disadvantaged children, as being almost completely in a black and white format, printing the book costs very little hence it is afforadable.
Loyola school
Intending to eliminate barriers and allow more people to participate in the endeavor of spreading awareness about synthetic biology, we visited a school named Loyola in Pune, to hold educational sessions for children studying in 4th to 6th standard.
At such a young age, children have a relatively difficult time, grasping basic concepts of synthetic biology. In addressing this very issue, we conducted hands-on-activities, such as extracting DNA from Bananas, in order to make the sessions engaging and fun for them. We went on to explain basic concepts of DNA, plasmids and how synthetic biology empowers us to modify them to suit our needs.
This, we found, was enough to spark curiosity in their minds about synthetic biology and made us realize that so much potential in the country remains to be tapped, if only we as a society could become more inclusive of people from all kinds of backgrounds.
More details on the same can be found in the ‘Loyola School’ section on our Education page.
Women in STEM
We all know how historically, women were considered intellectually and emotionally unfit for scientific work on par with men and hence their potential for contribution has been undermined at numerous occasions. Following from this perspective, women have not had access to equal opportunities in education, something that still remains an unfortunate fact in certain regions of our country. Although over the past few decades, women have made tremendous progress in being educated and obtaining access to prestigious and influential positions, the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) still appears to be dominated by men.
Recognising this reality and intending to bridge this gender gap, we launched a social media awareness campaign on the occasion of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, wherein we posted about three women scientists—Barbara McClintock, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, and Mary Dell Chilton. This was done in an effort to spread awareness about the crucial importance of women as potential participants in STEM, through examples both historical and closer to home.
Furthermore, in our spirit of being inclusive, we also posted about the achievements of African-American women scientists—Marie Maynard Daly and Jane C. Wright on the occasion of Black History Month. This was done in an effort to spread awareness about the fact that people from diverse backgrounds and not just genders, have a role to play in the field of STEM, if only they are given equal opportunities.
Explore our Communication page, to find out in detail about our efforts to be inclusive towards women!
Farmers' Perspective
As is mentioned in detail on our Description page, throughout our country and the world, extensive crop losses occurring due to the problems brought about by climate change, a major one of which is waterlogging, have a direct impact on both farmers’ lives and livelihoods.
In our efforts to tackle this grave problem faced by the farmers, they invariably become one of our main stakeholders and therefore throughout our project, the inclusion of farmers’ voices and perspectives has been of great importance to us.
In doing so we not only ensured that their experiences and opinions were heard and acknowledged, but we were also able to identify the exact details of the problem at a fundamental level, be it the cause of the problem, or even the frequency of occurrence of the problem. Knowing this is crucial, as we ultimately want our product to be useful for the farmers, in a way that genuinely benefits them and alleviates the issues brought about by waterlogging, which entails our idea to be feasible in nature.
The inclusion of their voice was ensured through active engagement by our team members in discussions with the farmers in person, on their farms. These issues were also taken forward to local farmer community platforms such as Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), to garner real data at a larger scale and to have a better understanding of farmers’ needs. Furthermore, to make them feel comfortable in expressing their issues on a personal level, our team conducted questionnaires and interviews in an easy to understand format, presented to them in their native language. More details on our interaction with the backbone of our country can be found on our Human Practices page.
Through this endeavor, we realized that the farmers belonging to a lower income bracket are affected significantly more by waterlogging as they have lesser support and infrastructure at their disposal. Thus, in the light of making our product accessible to all, we focussed extensively on the cost effectiveness of our solution, more on which can be found out on our Entrepreneurship and Implementation pages.
Accessibility Webinar
In our iGEM journey, we have had a partnership with the iGEM team UBC-vancouver and amongst many activities, we held a webinar on International Accessibility to Synthetic Biology Innovations with them in the month of August.
It was inspired from the fact that there were vast differences that both the teams had faced in terms of accessibility to numerous resources and opportunities as a part of iGEM.
Thus, to further shed light on the issue of accessibility to resources and synthetic biology in general, we invited experts from four continents across the world for sharing their experiences and opinions on this very issue.
The most important lesson which we learnt through this webinar, was the fact that in any country, the proliferation of synthetic biology, like any other discipline, requires a conducive environment and support, which is heavily influenced by the policies of the government of that particular country. Furthermore, in most cases these policies are influenced by public perception of the discipline under consideration, which is ultimately affected by inclusiveness of practitioners of the discipline!
Therefore, inclusivity is what closes this loop and ultimately contributes towards development of the field as a whole and not just the people and the society. This only served to reinforce our efforts to be inclusive of the society in our endeavor.
To know about this webinar of ours in greater detail, explore the 'Accessibility webinar' section of our Education page!
