Inclusivity
Overview
During the development of our project, we thought of different ways to connect our community to our team and our goals. We had questions such as "How can we make someone that does not has any contact with science understand the concept of synthetic biology? How can we fit an explanation to any background we can come across in our community?" From there we tried to create interventions that would maximize the understanding of people from different backgrounds, allowing us to get to know them as much as possible while also building knowledge together.
Comics
We created a comic that used only drawing for explaining a bit about synthetic biology and helminth infections. That way, we could widen our reach to people despite age, educational level, nationality, and language while allowing different interpretations accordingly to each individual’s context and life experiences. In addition, by giving people more knowledge about these diseases, they can now understand the danger behind them and be more careful on the watch of their health.
Translation: Pg. 1 and 6 - "Synthetic biology: Comic book that presents in a playful way the basic concept of synthetic biology, genetic editing. A didactic material for everyone's awareness and made for coloring!"| Pg. 3 - “Parasitic diseases: Comic book about contamination and prevention of diseases caused by worms. A didactic material for everyone's awareness, and made for coloring!”
The content
To explain some basic ideas about genetic engineering, we adapted our first comic design to fit their reality, as we realized something as common as a glow-worm was not so common for them. Therefore, we created a design that showed the mix of butterflies to represent the combination of two genes, adding in the explanations some more basic points about how the biological mechanisms happen. This way, we could communicate the idea of synthetic biology in a much lighter and more understandable way for them but still keep the goal we had for the comic.
About the helminthic diseases, we represented some points: how people are infected by helminth infections, which are the symptoms, how the disease is treated and how to prevent the infection. We hope that, from this experience, the individuals can watch out for areas that could possibly be in some danger and, if they come in contact with the parasite, identify the symptoms that suggest contamination. As a result, they will be more aware of the condition and look for health assistance to treat the disease. Besides, they can take simple actions to prevent contact with the parasite they may not have known before, helping the fight against them.
You can check all of our activities at the Humanitarian Mission page. And feel free to check our material and share it with many people as possible!
The first one was our first draft, and the second one was adapted to the people’s reality.
Translation: "Synthetic biology: Comic book that presents in a playful way the basic concept of synthetic biology, genetic editing. A didactic material for everyone's awareness and made for coloring!”
- Parasitosis awareness comic.
Translation: “Parasitic diseases: Comic book about contamination and prevention of diseases caused by worms. A didactic material for everyone's awareness, and made for coloring!”
To verify the effectiveness
We presented it to children and adults in our Humanitarian Mission to an indigenous community. By not using words, the comic allowed everyone to understand the content even without prior knowledge about the topics. The simple design and common examples helped them to contextualize the content to their daily lives, making it more simple for them to fully comprehend. The team noticed that most of the people presented with the comic understood what we were trying to communicate, having little trouble understanding the general context.
Science Classes
We see in our country that some areas with fewer resources lack school infrastructure, and children's education can be affected. Because of this, we prepared some science classes with primordial concepts to stimulate the children's creativity and make them little scientists for a day.
The team members implemented this project with the kids from the NGO Pequeno Lar, using games and explanations built on top of what the children already knew to help the learning process. We saw that adding a new concept to a base concept they already know makes the visualization of the new topic much easier and we can better suit the content to the children's knowledge, adding more information where it needs filling.
In the classes, we started by asking what they thought a scientist was and, by that, introduced the scientific methodology inside the context they described for us. By doing this, we helped them see how science is common in their daily lives and how easy it is to make science. From there, we added the concepts of atoms and gave them 3D atoms toys so they could form their own molecules and put their imagination to use. Afterward, we remembered the concepts they learned and explained if the molecules exist and where they are mostly found next to them. After that, they could comprehend that everything is made of atoms and create a discussion about what they think each thing is made of.
You can check out more about our planned activities on our Education page.
Science Divulgation
We heavily believe that science should be accessible to all people, being an important part of the research process. In our path as rising scientists, it's our job to help in this propagation by showing people the team's project and how it works with methods they would easily understand.
Thus, our team used different media vehicles to spread knowledge about our project, using objective structures capable of communicating the main ideas without needing extensive technical terms the major population would normally not have contact with.
One of the platforms used was our Instagram (@igemufmg_ufv), where the team posted pictures and videos about the development of the project and interacted with the viewers.
We also participated in the UFMG and at UFV's official news site, being the reportage divulgated to the academic community and beyond, taking the information about the insurgent area of synthetic biology one step further.
With the scientific divulgation, we aimed to open a door for the community so they could see the process of building our probiotic and learn with us on the way. You can check the articles and the vídeo at Media Outreach.
