Young Innovators Program: How IIT Kharagpur is shaping the future of world with young minds

New Delhi, October 5 : Every generation in this world grows up with some new set of challenges. We, the present generation of this global world has made serious damages to our planet earth in our haste to have a better life. IIT Kharagpur, through its one of a kind “Young Innovators Program” is making efforts to reinforce the planet with the help of young minds. It is a unique program for school students studying in class 8-10 from all across the world to show their scientific enthusiasm and willingness to help make the world a better place to live.
The program’s unique idea of promoting a culture of innovation and nurturing scientific temperament has been highly applauded by corporates, and communities of science and education all across the globe. The program is aimed at recognizing and helping students who have creative ability to conduct scientific research. The competition has received words of appreciation from President of India and an Israeli diplomat as well.
The program, which is in its third year has made several innovations like inventing an affordable anti-pollution mask to developing an easy model for managing the household waste. The final round of this year’s Young Innovators Program competition will be organised by IIT Kharagpur from November 8-10 in its campus. The final round competition has 33 teams from different schools of India, Singapore and UAE. The first round competition was conducted in July in which more than 4500 schools participated from different countries globally. The second round competition witnessed 2500 schools out of which only 33 schools made it to the final round to be held from November 8-10.
Young Innovators Program focuses on school students to develop working models and prototypes of innovative solutions for technological challenges in the domains of energy and environment, health and cleanliness, hardware modelling, product design, disaster management and financial inclusion. Students are encouraged and mentored in each of these themes to understand the importance of these areas and be equipped with the ability to ideate and come up with innovative solutions having local and global relevance.
Radha G of GIIS Smart Campus, Singapore spoke about how the competition encourages students to think out of the box, to be creative and to work collaboratively. “It is a great initiative that helps inculcate the 21 st century skills among the young,” she said.
How to Participate?
The competition for 2019 is in its final stage. Students aspiring to participate in 2020 can contact their school principal in order to participate in the program. The principal will nominate a coordinating teacher who will select a team of 2-3 students willing to participate in the program. The team will be required to brief their project to the faculties of IIT Kharagpur post which the project would be finalised.