A four-member team from the city to attend climate change conference
Times of India: A four-member team from the city which includes two school students has been nominated to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held at Copenhagen, Denmark from December 7.
Roopak Karulkar, a Std X student of Abhinav English Medium School, and Trupti Joshi, a Std IX student of Mar Ivanios School, will be accompanied by Parag Mankeekar, MD and CEO of Neeti Solutions, and Manasi Abhyankar, coordinator for school safety in the same company, to Copenhagen to observe the proceedings of the conference.
The team has been nominated to attend the summit under the Sustainable Markets Foundation350.org banner. 350.org has been admitted as an observer organisation to the sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Neeti Solutions, a social business solutions firm, develops innovative computer games for children based on climate change and disaster management. It chose the students through a video games competition held over three months in the city.
“Some 800 students participated in this competition. They were put through several rounds in which they had to develop computer games on climate change. Eight students were shortlisted, who then went through a round of interviews where the panel of judges asked them to present an innovative idea on climate change. Trupti and Roopak were the final two winners who will go to Denmark with us,” said. Mankeekar also serves as director of the Global Challenge Awards in India, which facilitates student exchange programmes between India and the US.
The firm has also won the Ashoka Fellowship for the subjects of its computer games. “I have participated in United Nations conferences several times, but did not see not much participation by Indian students. So this time, I fought with the UN to allow some Indian students to be a part of the climate change conference,” he said.
In Copenhagen, Roopak and Trupti will get an opportunity to present their innovative ideas to the students present. Roopak is in the process of completing a short film on Pune as a climate change city’, while Trupti will soon finish work on Kaun Banega Crorepati,’ a computer game on climate change.
“When we play such computer games, we are learning about climate change, disaster management and other serious issues affecting our planet. These are subjects we don’t get to learn easily in school. But this short film and the competition helped me a lot,” said Roopak.
“I never thought computer games could be such effective tools in education. In fact, Roopak and I are planning to start the Global Challenge Awards chapters in our respective schools from the next academic year, which will facilitate education exchange for the students,” said Trupti.
The whole idea, with the international conference in Copenhagen as the backdrop, is to show the significance of computers in school education, pointed out Mankeekar. “We want to tell schools that how they, despite having computer labs, do not give easy access to their students to learn via computers. Also, not many school teachers are able to teach subjects like environmental science and geography very effectively. So we want to propagate the use of computers in education,” he added.
Last month, Mankeekar also held a workshop for teachers from 40 city schools on using computers as learning tools for students.
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