By Tahir Gazanfar
From November 20-25,Wildlife SOS participated and mentored a 5 day internship programme held at the Nigeen Club, located in the city of Srinagar. The program was called INSPIRE, which means, Innovation in Science Pursuits for Inspired Research. The program was designed to inspire and encourage budding innovators and future scientists to pursue careers that would develop new technologies geared towards addressing global problems like energey, healthcare, food production and environmental degradation.
INSPIRE was launched by the Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi. This innovative program hopes to build a talented human resource pool that can strengthen and expand science and technology.
Dr. M.A. Shah and Dr. Seemin Rubab from the National Institute of Technology in Srinigar organized the INSPIRE workshop and invited Wildlife SOS to mentor the Internship program. During the week, Wildlife SOS had an opportunity to work with about 400 students from all the districts of Kashmir. The students who participated were in their 11th or 12th standard and had all achieved A+ ranks in their higher secondary examinations.
Representing Wildlife SOS at the workshop were Aaliya Mir, Tahir Gazanfar and many dedicated volunteers. All of whom had a great experience working with the gifted students. The team presented the current situation of wildlife in the state of Jammu and Kahmir. The focus of the talk was to educate students on the challenges facing wildlife conservation in the area and hopefully spark concern for the increasing problem of man-wildlife confict. Using the premise for the workshop, Wildlife SOS hopes students will want to help develop technologies that can benefit wildlife and the local community.
The five day long workshop also featured the talks and demonstrations from people relating to different fields of science including medical, engineering, agriculture and animal sciences. The guest speakers and the participants were felicitated at the end of the program.
