India is a developing nation. While the literacy rate in our country has grown from 18.3% in 1951, four years after we gained
independence, to 77.7% in 2018, it is still significantly less than the global literacy rate of 86.3%.
Of this 77.7%, the number of people that have even heard the term Synthetic Biology, let alone know its meaning, is insignificant.
As an iGEM team of ten undergraduates, we sought to bring about as much change as we could, within the communities that surround us.
To accomplish this, we began devising our strategy as soon as the iGEM cycle started, to ensure that we would be able to do valuable outreach throughout the year.
We created a five fold strategy - Plan, Prepare, Execute, Learn, and Improve - and followed it religiously for all our endeavours.
Planning included the ideation process and reaching out to various people to set up the activity we had in mind. Preparation was sleepless nights while we curated our talks and created presentations for the sessions. Execution consisted of delegations from our team actually doing all that we had worked on beforehand, at ground zero.
Learning included obtaining feedback from the members in our activities and compiling it along with our own experience with the event. Improvement was the final part where we analysed what we had learnt and applied it to future plans.
We decided to target a broad audience to ensure that we were able to reach enough people from diverse backgrounds. The groups that we identified included students from grades 5th to 10th, upper primary and secondary science teachers in schools, science undergraduates and other iGEM teams. We also targeted groups that suffer from social neglect like specially abled people, and children in orphanages.
Once we identified our target groups, we started off with our pentagonal strategy to devise activities for each group.
School Visits
Target group -
School students from grades 5th to 10th were our first target group. Synthetic biology is unheard of within the Indian Education system for these age groups. We wanted to make students aware of the field while they were still young so that they had the option of exploring it before making decisions about their future careers.With the help of Dr Aparna Deshpande, the faculty-in-charge, Mr Ashok Rupner, the senior teaching associate, and Mr Ankish Tirpude, the technical assistant at our institute’s Smt Indrani Balan Science Activity Centre, we started reaching out to schools in and around the city of Pune with plans of inform students about synthetic biology, dengue fever and our project AbDEN, and about the iGEM competition. We connected with three schools in and around the city of Pune.
Plan -
For our sessions at schools, we had to start from different levels for different grades. We decided the contents of our talk based on the audience. We decided that we would roughly cover the three fundamental topics - synthetic biology, iGEM, and dengue and ABDEN, in all our sessions but to varying degrees.For our first session which was for 8th graders, we decided that we would start off by telling them about academia and research. Basic discussions about bacteria would follow, like their uses and diseases, which would be our segue into talking about synthetic biology and genetic engineering. We planned on ending with an overview of dengue fever and AbDEN, relating it to synthetic biology.
We also decided to send out feedback forms to students a few days after our sessions to see how useful the sessions had been, and how much were the students able to retain after a short while. The form was made in English, but later translated to Hindi based on our experience at the sessions.
You can find our feedback forms at the following links-
Prepare -
For our session, we decided to develop an attractive presentation that would hold the attention of the students. The presentation included the definition and uses of synthetic biology. We also wanted to surprise them with the capabilities of synthetic biology and added videos and images of plants that have been engineered to glow, and the hox gene mutations in fruit flies like antennapedia and bithorax. We drew a simple schematic of dengue and our project in our presentation, along with a few slides on iGEM: what it is, how it is useful, and how to participate.Execute - BJS School
The first school that we visited was Bhartiya Jain Sanghatana (BJS) School, Pune. Principal Santosh Bhandari invited our team to BJS School on September 9, 2022 to talk to students in 8th grade.
To our shock, their television screen started glitching as we tried to present our idea. We quickly adapted to the situation and shifted to using a chalkboard, drawing and writing parts of our presentation as we went ahead.
The session started with an introduction to IISER Pune and discussing the natural sciences, specifically biology, along with the innumerable developments scientists have achieved over the years. Bacteria came next - the question “are bacteria good or bad?” faced a quorum that declared bacteria to be bad. Then, as we explained the irreplaceable role of lactobacilli in making curd, a very common part of Indian cuisine, the students were shocked. The various roles of beneficial bacteria were further discussed, followed by a discussion on the different diseases caused by bacteria and to give a very basic and completely jargon-free overview of how bacteria can be used for producing recombinant proteins.
We asked the students about issues that plague the modern world. One of the many responses was dengue fever. We took this chance to explain how dengue is caused by a virus, and briefly mentioned the factors that complicate this disease. Then, we went ahead and explained our project AbDEN and how synthetic biology tied in with our solution. We finally discussed what being a science undergraduate entails and wrapped up the session as the students got up and started clapping, completely overwhelming us.
Then, a 5th grade teacher that was also present for the session came up and requested us to do an activity with her class as well. We decided to have an art session with the children, and asked them to draw the first thing that comes to their mind when they hear “dengue.” The kids were excited when they heard that they could choose what they wanted to sketch, in contrast with the strict instructions that were often imposed upon them. Once they were finished drawing, we collected their artwork and discussed the most common sketches - hospitals, ambulances, viruses, and medicines - in the light of dengue fever specifically. The cheerful students seemed to have had a lot of fun and unanimously raised their hands when asked if they wanted to become a scientist in the future.
Learn -
Being our first session where we were educating students, it was a great learning experience. The curveball of the glitchy projector was very useful as it showed us how well the children responded to chalkboard teaching. We also realised the importance of communicating with them in their local language of Marathi or Hindi, over English, and using a lot of metaphors and analogies from our daily life. It helped them relate what was being taught by us to their lived experiences.Improve -
Based on our session at the BJS School, we decided that while we would still have a presentation, we would rely a lot more on chalkboards. We started requesting chalkboards before sessions, and explained some component of every topic using them. We also edited our talk and added many metaphors and references to things like superheroes and cartoons.Since our second talk was for 5th and 6th graders, we edited the talk’s content and presentation as well. We used an easier definition of synthetic biology, included a chalkboard section on basic cell biology with focus on the nucleus, and cut down upon the scientific aspects of dengue and AbDEN. We also decided on using the local languages, Marathi or Hindi, along with English while explaining concepts and meanings.
Execute - Urja Gurukul
The next session that we took was at our institute itself. Our Science Activity Centre had invited 5th and 6th graders from Urja Gurukul School, Ahmednagar, on September 6. We prepared for this session, keeping in mind everything that we had learnt from our first one. We decided that they wanted to tell these kids who were soon going to enter the world of science about all the seemingly impossible things science could bring to pass, with the aim of making them realise that life as a scientist is not drab or dull.In India, many students face societal pressure to become either an engineer or a doctor; becoming a scientist is not really considered. By opening these young minds to science, we wanted to spread the word about how life as a scientist is incredibly thrilling and full of surprises.
We started off by introducing the interdisciplinarity of synthetic biology, and how synthetic biology can make bacteria do all the things that we want them to do. Then, we went into how synthetic biology can also be used on larger organisms, like fruit-flies and even plants, using examples of fruit-fly hox genes like antennapedia and bithorax. Plants engineered to emit light were also discussed, with a focus on how synthetic biology could help solve world problems, like the unavailability of electricity in rural parts of the world.
As we learned from the last session, while explaining and talking to them about our idea, we took to the chalkboard. We asked them about the various diseases that they knew of. Dengue was in the first five diseases that they named. The audience, students and their teachers alike, were very surprised when we told them that till now, there is no known cure against dengue, a disease that is very common in the lives of Indians. We went ahead and informed them about AbDEN, our solution to dengue, and how we have used synthetic biology to make bacteria do what we want them to do.
Over the loud roar of claps, we encouraged the audience to ask questions, mentioning how a very crucial part of being a scientist is to just ask questions. Once they started, the diversity of questions asked was mind-blowing. The keen students asked us about genes, DNA, similarities between dengue and COVID-19, if the glowing plants could be turned off during the day, and much more.
After about half an hour of satisfying the curiosity of the students, one of the three teachers in the audience came up and praised us for this session, telling us that she was the students’ science teacher, and how this would help them get excited about studying in her classes. She also invited us to visit the school once iGEM competition is done and share more about our work and experience.
It was a day well spent, ending with the kids shouting “all the best” as we left the classroom.
Learn -
The children and teachers had travelled for about 3 hours to attend this session, and it meant a lot when they told us that our session was more than what they had expected. These students were highly interactive and asked questions as soon as they got over their nervousness. Even their teachers were enthusiastic and asked questions about synthetic biology and our project.One important point that we observed after this session was that the number of girls in the classroom was very small. We realised that this had been true for our previous session as well.
Urja Gurukul Feedback Responses
Improve -
With the realisation that while our efforts had been successful in taking synthetic biology and AbDEN to school students, we had not been able to go past the existing bias against girl students in the educational set-up, we wanted to change gears. We reached out to all-girl schools and decided to take a session there.Since this session was for high school students, we added a lot more scientific detail to our presentation. We talked to them about the synthetic biology that went into creating our examples of glowing plants and mutated fruit flies. We also told them about AbDEN in greater detail and explained our choice of chassis, therapeutic, and dengue to them as well. We added a section on iGEM and iGEM Indian League too.
Execute - Huzurpaga School
For our last session, we were able to connect with the Huzurpaga school, India's oldest all-girls school run by Indians. We took up the charge of visiting the school and interacting with the students of grades 9th and 10th. Based on our learnings from the last two sessions, we wanted particularly to excite the young women at Huzurpaga about the STEM fields, specifically synthetic biology.
We decided that we would start off with an overview of what synthetic biology is and its interdisciplinarity, followed by the multifarious applications it has. We went on to explain our chosen examples of synthetic biology - glowing plants and fruit fly hox gene mutations. Since these were high schoolers, we went further into the scientific details behind these two cases to talk about genetic engineering, and to ask the students to think about other cases where the principles of synthetic biology could be put to good use. The students came up with a number of creative ideas and seemed to have broadly understood the basis of genetic engineering.
We then spoke about iGEM - how it is a competition that enables students to explore different areas of synthetic biology, exposing them to a new world of research and science communication, and lets students investigate the problems that plague their world by talking to the public. We also mentioned iGEM Indian league - the newly formed part of iGEM that caters to Indian participants.
We talked about the kind of projects that iGEMers undertake, followed by our project AbDEN. To get them involved and to interact, we started by asking them to tell us whatever they knew about Dengue. Since they were in high school, their knowledge was factually correct. This was followed by a brief summary of the Dengue virus and its serotypes, and how it causes Antibody Dependent Enhancement.
This section was full of questions that we answered till the girls were satisfied. This was followed by telling them our solution to the problem of dengue- AbDEN. We informed them of the details of our project - antibodies, epitopes and paratopes, neutralisation, and scFvs - using as little jargon as possible. The students seemed to be very interested in the project and interacted by asking questions and clarifications.
After their talk, which ended with a big round of applause, we sat down with the girls and talked about a few pertinent issues. Members of our team shared their experiences as women in STEM, and discussed how society can often be an obstacle as girls across the world try to realise their dreams. They spoke about how this shouldn't dampen their enthusiasm but light an even stronger fire within them.
As we were leaving, we received lots of hugs from the students, amidst a chorus of thank yous. This session was very encouraging, not only to the students, but to our team as well. We felt that we had brought a change in the lives of these young women.
Learn -
We learnt a lot from this session, and from the highly motivated girl students of Huzurpaga. We observed the gender gap in education and STEM fields firsthand, which was very shocking. While talking to the students, we came to know that incidences of sexism and gendered expectations are still very prevalent in our society. While really excited and interactive during our session, a few girls told us that they weren't sure if they would be allowed to study further, especially in the field of STEM.Improve -
We were left with a knot in our guts after our last session. We realised that we have to put in much more effort to combat this social problem. We plan on working towards eradicating this notion of girls being incompatible with STEM even after our iGEM cycle. We also plan on reaching out to families of the girls that attend local schools and taking their opinions on this matter, to get a better understanding of the pervasiveness of this harmful issue.Synthetic Biology Exhibit
Target group -
We put up a stall at the Mimamsa Science Fest of our institute. Undergraduates from a local college and senior secondary students from a local school were invited to the fest, along with the students from our own institute.Plan -
Mimamsa is IISER Pune’s flagship national level quizzing event, one of the biggest events of its kind in our country. As our college was preparing for Mimamsa Science Fest, we reached out to Saransh Agrawal, the general coordinator of Mimamsa 2022, and Siddharth Sharma, the science fest coordinator for Mimamsa 2022, with the plans of putting up a synthetic biology stall. They were excited to have our exhibit as a part of the science fest. We also reached out to iGEM IISER Pune Team 1, another iGEM team from our own institute, to collaborate with them in this activity.
Prepare -
We settled upon multiple small activities that we would have on our stall, which the visitors could do. We arranged for many foldscopes so as to show the audience that just paper and lenses can come together to form a very powerful microscope. We took the help of our Science Activity Centre and procured DNA and virus origami, where people could make their own DNA helix or virus particles by following easy instructions. We also came up with simple yet thought-provoking questions based on synthetic biology, genetics, and microbiology for the visitors of our stall. We also crafted a quick plasmid construction game for our exhibit.
Execute -
We decided to excite the school and college students about the work that happens in a college of natural sciences. We used our foldscopes to show previously prepared slides to the visitors but also gave them the option of bringing whatever sample they wanted to see. Some brought leaves, while others brought pond water. We helped them make their own slides and then visualise the sample using the foldscopes. We talked about the basic principles of microscopy with them as they participated in this activity.
We informed people about the structure of the helix and the implications of this structure on the functions of DNA, and about the features of virus structure and capsid, as they would fold their own structures using our easy-to-make origami that we sourced from the Science Activity Centre.
The undergrads and school students were very eager to try their hand at solving the questions that we had made for our stall. Questions were placed in a bowl and visitors would grab one and try to answer it. Most people tried at least three questions seeing how fun they were. We would discuss the concepts behind the question whenever someone would attempt it. All the people who tried to answer a question were given small chocolate bars.
We also informed people about our project at our stall. This was our first activity where we took the opinions of the public regarding our idea, along with raising awareness against dengue fever. We talked about iGEM as well, discussing how it is a wonderful learning experience and encouraged people to take part in future cycles of the iGEM competition.
Learn -
We discussed our project and synthetic biology with undergraduates from other colleges for the first time through this activity. We realised that even within higher education institutions, there is a disparity between the knowledge of synthetic biology. Due to resource limitations, many students of colleges do not get to experience the hands-on aspects of synthetic biology. They were also completely unaware about iGEM competition.Improve -
We understood that along with targeting school students, we should pay attention to students of local colleges. We can help them by inviting them to our labs and showing them instruments and some basic techniques. Holding lab sessions where we could teach them simple protocols would also be very helpful to them. Unfortunately, we were unable to get the required permissions from our institution to organise such sessions in time but we are continuing our efforts.Talk for Teachers
Target group -
While our team was interacting with students from schools, we realised that their teachers were also very interested in what we had to say, and seemed unaware of what synthetic biology could achieve. Therefore, we decided to have a session exclusively for science teachers of grades 5 through 10. This session was being organised by our Science Activity Centre in our institute itself, where they had invited around 40 science teachers of upper primary and secondary students. We requested Mr Ashok Rupner and Mr Ankish Tirpude to allow us to interact with the school teachers as part of our outreach efforts and they were very happy to help us out, advising us as we prepared for the session.Plan -
This was a very special activity that we got the opportunity to organise as part of our public education campaign. Being undergraduates in the 5th semester, we were very unsure about what we could possibly teach educators with at least 5 years of experience. We started discussing this session with other people from our institute and observed that there was a lot that they wanted to tell their teachers. From our own experience of studying science in school versus studying it in our institute, we also realised that there is a stark difference in the pedagogy of schools and colleges. We decided to make a new feedback form that would allow us to get the valuable opinions of the teachers on our project and the session.Prepare -
We created a new presentation for this session. We included points about the pedagogical techniques published by the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT), particularly the ones catered towards upper primary and secondary grade students. We also compiled a list of suggestions that the people we talked to had and decided to take up the task of taking what students felt to the teachers. We also recognised this as a wonderful opportunity to take the opinions of school level educators on AbDEN and added slides on our project in our presentation, along with some on iGEM.We also made a questionnaire for the teachers so as to understand the kinds of issues they face in their classrooms.
Execute -
We started off this session by citing a position paper published by NCERT and discussing the points about science curricula and classroom practices mentioned in the paper. All the teachers agreed with us as we shared our experience of not receiving the activity-driven and discovery-oriented kind of science education in school that the paper talked about.We tried to compare our school science classes with the classes at our college and impressed upon the teachers the kind of impact an engaging lecture filled with hands-on activities and thinking questions can have. We asked the teachers about their experiences, and the issues they face in organising such activities, either from the school's side or from students and their parents. Resource limitations, time restrictions, and race to just get good grades were a few of the major reasons.
This was followed by a section where we shared the few valuable suggestions we had compiled after talking to various students in our college. The teachers agreed with the points about how the concept of a "good" student does more harm than good, how accepting that the teacher doesn't know something is actually helpful to the pupil, and how urging students to ask questions and accepting all questions promotes curiosity.
The meaning of synthetic biology was then discussed, where the teachers asked clarifications about the work that we do in our labs. We moved on to informing the educators about iGEM competition and iGEM Indian league, especially the high school category and requested the teachers to spread this information to their students, fellow teachers, and school administration.
Finally, we went ahead and started talking about AbDEN - the issue of dengue and our solution of using NeoFvs. He asked for their opinions on AbDEN and the teachers had a lot of clarifications and interesting points that were noted. This session also seemed to have helped science educators of the formative years improve upon their pedagogical techniques.
Learn -
This session was very useful as we got newer perspectives on AbDEN that we had not considered previously. We asked the teachers to fill in our feedback form and questionnaire after the session. We came to know about the issues the teachers face in organising quality classes like school’s and parents’ demands for high scores in examinations.Improve -
Through this session, we realised that there are issues beyond what teachers are capable of remedying. We feel that we should talk to school administrations as well about their stance on the quality versus quantity of education, and their opinions on the addition of synthetic biology to the school curriculum.ImmunoWorld and PlasmiX
Target group -
As part of our educational outreach, we also wanted to create tangible materials that could be reproduced and used by people across the world to learn more about our project and synthetic biology. We wanted to develop content that would be self-sufficient and would not depend heavily on prior knowledge, and could be used by people across ages.Plan -
In lieu of this, we decided to develop an interactive activity book for young kids so that they could learn while performing fun tasks. We wanted to come up with a game for people of all ages that would teach them about synthetic biology. We also planned to create an anti-dengue pamphlet that would help raise awareness against dengue.Prepare -
Through our activity book, we decided to educate children about the basics of immunology using engaging activities. We came up with an original storyline that featured a conversational narrative and included various parts of the immune system, with a specific focus on the Dengue virus. We went through the games developed earlier, by previous years’ teams, for example Elixio The Game by Toulouse 2021, and decided to make an innovative card game that would teach people about plasmids and restriction enzymes while playing. Our anti-dengue pamphlet consisted of ways to reduce the instances of dengue by following easy-to-do instructions.Execute -
Kids learn much better when they are engaged through activities and tasks that are associated with the content that is being taught. We wanted to employ this in our activity book to ensure that our efforts were worthwhile and the readers learnt as they went through the book. This was how "ImmunoWorld - An Activity Book for Young Scientists" was born. The science was taught using a story of four anthropomorphised elements of the immune system that readers would connect with. Out of these four characters, two used he/him pronouns, while the other two used she/her pronouns. The fifth character, Captain AbDEN was developed to be gender neutral and no pronouns were used for them so that all children could relate and are made familiar with gender non-conformity without making it too direct.We included many tasks that would keep the kids entertained and attentive. Factoids were added to ensure that they could keep learning new things in small digestible chunks as they read through. The activity book is such that the information contained in it is independent of previous knowledge of the reader. We also encouraged readers to ask questions to their parents and teachers. Our email address and wiki link were also added to the book so that they could reach out to us, and learn more about us and our project.
We went to a vasthi (slum) located near our institute and spent an evening with the children there, with them reading our activity books. The kids had a lot of fun and surprised us with their awareness about dengue. We told them the story of Rohan, Aisha, Jogi, and Jane, and how they protect us from various diseases.
You can find the ebook version of our activity book ImmunoWorld here!
Synthetic biology is still an elusive field for people who aren't academically or professionally involved in it. Basic concepts of the discipline, like plasmid construction, are not widely understood due to lack of information and exposure, despite being highly intuitive. We wanted to change this and that's where PlasmiX came in. PlasmiX is a very simple and highly innovative card game that can be played by people of all ages with varying levels of complexity. The game includes different cards: plasmid cards, gene cards, and restriction enzyme cards. These goal of the game is to use these cards to design a plasmid construct. PlasmiX comes with very simple rules and instructions, and is user-friendly. All one has to do is download, print, cut, and play! The game is such that the level of complexity can be varied and it can also be used as a wonderful teaching tool for students. We have used a colourblind-friendly colour palette to make the cards and the rule book of the game. The inspiration for this game came from the popular card game “UNO.”
We have made PlasmiX available for everyone to download, play, and learn.
Our anti-dengue pamphlet was made by compiling a list of well-known yet rarely followed tips and suggestions that would serve to reduce the cases of dengue fever in a year and are very easy to put in effect. Vector control measures and usage of repellents were some of the many points contained in the pamphlet. Given the diversity of India and the various different languages spoken by Indians, we also translated our pamphlet into 7 different Indian languages- Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, and Marathi. This would allow us to distribute our pamphlets to people of various communities from across our country.
Learn -
While developing the story for our activity book, we realised that it is very difficult to create content that does not assume prior knowledge of the readers. Our card game made us realise that optimising a game and making it user-friendly is a long process that requires many iterations.Improve -
We would like to develop further modules of our activity book that educate children about other topics like synthetic biology. We also want to make new versions of our activity book that are targeted towards different age groups so that we can specifically cater to them.For our game, we plan to create a mobile app version that would not only allow users to have a lot of fun, but also give them detailed information about plasmid construction through animated lessons as they play the game. It would also make PlasmiX more easily accessible in the modern world of smartphones.
Webinar Series
We wanted to host webinars on various topics related to synthetic biology and immunology for undergraduate students across the
globe, and other iGEMers as well, so that they could learn more about the science behind our project. We ensured that all the talks were
accompanied by a question and answer session where the attendees could ask questions and seek clarifications.
We planned to have our first webinar, ImmunoTalk 1, on synthetic biology and therapeutics, the track we have selected for our
project. We reached out to two giants of their fields- Dr Narendra Chirmule and Dr Mehmet Berkmen.
Dr Narendra Chirmule is the founder-director of SymphonyTech Biologics, a company focused on statistical, technical, and quality
aspects of drug development. Most recently, he was head of R&D at Biocon Research Labs, Bangalore, one of India's largest biotechnology
companies. Under his leadership, the company received the first ever approvals of biologics by FDA and EMA in India.
Dr Chirmule spoke about gene therapy as the final frontier in medicine. We learned about common gene therapy methods practised in
medical science and how gene therapy can be used to cure genetic diseases.
Dr Mehmet Berkmen is an internationally-known microbiologist. He is currently a Senior Scientist at New England Biolabs, where his laboratory develops and optimises genetically engineering bacteria to produce proteins. He is also the developer of the SHuffle strain of E. coli, the chassis chosen by us.
Dr Berkmen spoke about the synthesis of full-length antibodies in the SHuffle system. It was a great experience to listen to him talk about the SHuffle strain, and we learned a lot about it through the experiences he shared with the audience.
We also collaborated with the iGEM MIT Mahe, India to host a webinar on biosafety, an important consideration for iGEMers and biologists. We got Dr Vinod Jyothikumar on board for this webinar. Dr Jyothikumar has a broad background in bio-threat, biosecurity, and biological safety from working in the fields of biotechnology, healthcare, and academic research. After working at Syngene International Ltd as the Crisis Management Operation Lead - Pandemic, he is now a consultant for Operational Risk Management at dss+.
In the talk, Dr Jothikumar discussed the safety and ethics involved with the fields of synthetic biology and genetic engineering. He talked about the double-edged nature of synthetic biology and the fear of misuse. Regulatory aspects involved with building a project and the various regulatory bodies that concern a project were also mentioned. He also discussed the use of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells, the existing choice for antibody production, and their pros and cons.
We wanted our third webinar, ImmunoTalk 2, to go into the details of the mechanisms of the immune system. We reached out to Prof Satyajit Rath, a Professor Emeritus at IISER Pune. He was also a scientist at the National Institute of Immunology, India, where he worked on antigen processing, T and B cell development, activation, and tolerance. His research interests lie in the physiological control of the generation and activation of T, B, and antigen-presenting cells (APCs) of the myeloid lineage. Moreover, Prof Rath is a captivating speaker who keeps the listeners on the edge of their seats.
In the talk, he spoke about the common misconceptions people associate with immunity, like how immunity can be increased or decreased. Prof Rath talked about the underlying mechanisms controlling the processes involving immune responses in humans and how evolution fundamentally controls them. We received great insights about immunity against viruses like the Dengue virus through this webinar and used them to connect with our project even more.
Blood Donation Drive
On the occasion of World Blood Donor Day, we organised a blood donation drive on our campus with the help of Dr Tejas Kalelkar
and Prof VS Rao from our institute, Rotary Club of Pune, Shivajinagar, and Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital.
Given the strong association of dengue fever with blood due to mosquitoes, and because of its symptoms like reduced blood platelet count, we felt that this was a truly essential event in our educational outreach and communication plans.
We publicised the event by putting up posters around the campus a few days before the drive and witnessed a large crowd on the occasion of World Blood Donor Day.
We helped people with filling forms, informing them about the entire process and the different booths that they had to get clearance from. We offered tea and snacks to the donors so that they do not get very light-headed after donating blood. We also ensured that everything that was required by the medical personnel, like stationery, was available.
When the staff ran out of English forms, we helped translate the Marathi forms for people who did not know Marathi so that they could fill them. Members from our team also got the chance to donate blood for the first time as part of the drive. Along with this, we raised awareness against dengue fever during the drive and requested people to take our anti-dengue pledge.
We informed them about our project and received valuable inputs from the public, doctors and nurses, and the Rotary Club as well.
This experience was the first one of its kind for the members of our team. Organising this helped us realise the work that goes into properly managing such an event, and how medical staff prepares for and operates during a blood donation drive.
A Session with Socially Neglected Groups
Specially abled women- Victims of social stigma
Along with reaching out to children, we wanted to spread awareness about dengue to some significant and disadvantaged groups in our community. We visited Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled - a home for specially abled and distressed women in Bangalore in order to spread awareness among the women about the risks and prevention of dengue. The women here either have special needs due to which they cannot fend for themselves and are mostly uneducated. Many of them have suffered from domestic abuse and require financial assistance and a safe place to live. They are a sensitive and highly stigmatised group, so the names of the occupants have been kept anonymous and photos of the event have not been taken.We started out by asking questions about dengue to the women who were present. We gauged their knowledge by using the questions from the survey form we had made for our Human Practices. Since they were not comfortable with English, we spoke to them in Kannada. They seemed to know what the disease was and how it spreads, but were unaware of the symptoms and control of the disease. The management did not provide its occupants with mosquito nets for the bedding or mosquito repellents as they had never experienced a case of dengue within the home. They also lacked access to healthcare facilities and expressed concerns about acquiring medication. We provided them with Dr C Nirmala’s contact, who is a pathologist at Victoria Hospital, a government hospital in Bangalore that provides free healthcare to people. She also offered to informally help out the women with respect to their medical requirements if needed.
They, however, knew of interesting home remedies to cure dengue, like papaya leaf extract, a popular treatment for the condition in our community. This was an interesting lesson for us.
Apart from discussing dengue, we engaged in conversations about their lives and the struggles they have faced. We heard deeply personal accounts of their lives, and left the meeting with great respect for the residents, given all that they have experienced and endured.
The home was set up to help women who have no means to survive by themselves and need assistance. To this end, we donated some clothes as well, to help them out.
Orphans with limited access to education
With the goal of promoting awareness amongst orphaned children who acquire limited basic education from the government, our team reached out to the Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled again to spread information about dengue and provide the children with informal education. We reached out to Mr Naveen, a member of the trust, who was very gracious in helping us organise our visit.We interacted with 10-12 kids at the age of 6, in Kannada, the language they are most comfortable with. We taught them about basic hygiene and about the importance of ensuring that their surroundings were clean so as to stop mosquitoes from breeding. We played fun games with them so as to keep them engaged and asked them basic questions about common local diseases to gauge what they already knew, after which we taught them more about disease prevention and first-aid. To stress upon the importance of being hygienic, we brought up the examples of vector borne diseases. We spoke about dengue, how it is spread and how to prevent it.
We ended the session by encouraging the kids to ask questions, so as to figure out how much they learnt and to understand the impact of our teaching methods on these young minds. We distributed our anti-dengue pamphlets in Kannada, their vernacular language. Since the kids we interacted with were very young, we did not feel comfortable taking their photographs, and were also advised the same by the authorities.
Park Visit
We visited a local park and interacted with some children there. They were about 10 to 12 years old and had some basic knowledge about dengue. One of them had even suffered from dengue in the past. They asked us some questions regarding the cause and spread of dengue and what is the mosquito’s role in the spreading. We answered their questions thoroughly while not going too much into the scientific details for their age and understanding. Then, we also informed them about some general precautions they can take to save themselves from dengue. Lastly, we talked to them about our project, AbDEN, and how we are trying to solve the menace of dengue through antibodies and synthetic biology. Then, we took their permission to click a picture and posed for one with smiles from the learning experience.
