Transcriber: Sarah Celeste Reviewer: David DeRuwe
In March 2020, India declared COVID-19 as a national pandemic.
Overnight, the school got shut; exams got cancelled.
Students like you and I, we packed our uniforms and get them aside.
Initially we were glad about it.
I mean, no more home assignments, no more weekly assignments -
just scrolling through Netflix all day, watching movies,
sleeping, and scrolling through your Instagram feeds, right?
While we were doing all of this,
what we didn’t realize is that the outside world was suffering tremendously.
COVID-19 created a new divide,
a divide which was there for decades, but it wasn’t as prominent.
It becomes more prominent as days pass.
This divide was of the haves and the have nots.
We, being on the side of haves, we had everything during the pandemic:
We had a roof over our head. We had food in our plates.
We had savings in our bank accounts.
But people on the other side, people on the side of have nots,
they lost so much:
They lost their houses. They lost their jobs.
They lost the meaning of livelihood.
And students?
Students lost the best days of their lives which will never come back again.
While we were sipping on coffee, attending our lectures,
with switched-off cameras and mikes muted,
there were hundreds of children on streets wanting to have a device to learn,
but they didn’t have it.
As if they didn’t exist, as if they didn’t belong,
as if they weren’t a part of our education system.
They lost something, something as basic as the right to education,
and all of this because we live in a divided society of have and have not.
The students who had digital tools could connect with lecturers any time,
but the other ones with the same intent, they were left behind.
As time passed, schools started reopening, markets started reopening.
Students started coming back to school, but not all of them.
Many students dropped out of school,
and out of that many, girls were impacted.
Girls were the ones who were made to stay back at home
and learn the traits of being an eligible housewife
so that they could be married off tomorrow, which is not fair.
While boys become anything they want to be,
girls become what the society wants them to be.
In today’s generation, we are still a prey of gender roles.
The roles are allowed on the basis of masculine and feminine,
not on the basis of eligibilities and capabilities.
To tackle this challenge, we are a changemaker group.
We’ve stepped up. We stepped up to bring change.
We stepped up to initiate something that the society needed
and the morality demanded.
We, being the privileged lot in the society,
we had the means to help the underprivileged.
So we reached out to a couple of underprivileged girls
who had lost all hope.
They lost all their childhood dreams,
those dreams which were overlooked by society the moment they were born
because they were born as girls.
Why?
Why are women only known as daughters, wives, sisters, and mothers?
Are we not capable of becoming
engineers, doctors, lawyers scientists, mathematicians?
Well, we are capable enough,
but the question is: Are we given those opportunities?
Well unfortunately, we all know the answer to that.
All we ask for is an opportunity.
All Lakshmi asks for is an opportunity, same as her brother.
All Kirti asks for is an opportunity, same as her father.
So all these Lakshmis and Kirtis.
For all these Lakshmis and Kirtis,
we decided to come together as a group, and we decided to take the path of STEP.
We encourage them to learn and practice
the basic concepts of science and technology,
which involves the basic things, such as switching on a laptop,
learning the ways of online schooling, learning how to read a clock.
All these basic jobs won’t help them anywhere in academics,
but it will help them in future life being independent.
Why STEM?
Well, I fell in love with the subject when I started in the school a year back.
Fourth door on the left of the fifth floor -
it was the place where I spent most of my time,
and no, it wasn’t the school cafeteria; it was our school’s makers lab.
Now you all must be wondering: What is a makers lab?
I wondered too when I first heard about it.
The makers lab - it’s a world of its own.
It’s a place to discover, which is waiting to be discovered.
It’s a place where all the curious minds blend together,
and they ask the questions “how, what, and why?”
It’s a place where eager minds come together and they create something,
a place where no gender is ever a hurdle.
And that’s the contribution of makers lab in my life.
It taught me how to ask questions
like “what, how, and why” to everything around me,
and isn’t that what science and technology is all about?
About being curious to know and eager to learn?
I’m Veronica Arora, a 13-year-old girl, and what are my views on STEM?
STEM is just about asking questions.
It's just about knowing the answers to everything around you.
And that’s what we taught, those underprivileged girls:
We taught them how to ask questions.
We taught them how to be curious.
We taught them how to be eager to learn.
And that's my contribution to their life,
which I think will impact them in the future.
And I thank my school for giving me this project and the opportunity to do so.
Thank you so much.