The joy of skywatching is never limited to young children. A sense of humility and wonder sets in effortlessly when one looks up into the vast expanse spotting the stars, constellations and planets. In a world where clear night skies are hard to find because of light pollution, spending the whole night understanding astronomy is a great treat. Even more exciting is the fact that digital mediums help in gaining more knowledge about the cosmic world.
STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) subjects not only fosters innovative thinking and serves as a foundation on which many skills get developed but instills confidence, stimulates the mind to think out of the box, provides a good platform to build human relationships through peer interaction, gives better opportunities to connect with the real world and keeps the curiosity to learn alive.
I left for Jasidih, Jharkhand on 5th of February for training for Digital Didis’ who are going to work in the Jamui district of Bihar. Boarding the train from Kolkata Station, my mind was filled with all the thoughts that arose from the conversations I had with my family and colleagues when they got to know that I will be travelling alone to Bihar.
A few miles away from a town that is famously recognized for donkeys, Barabanki, one can glide to the rhythmic tune emanating from the hand looms along the lanes with kacha and pakka houses spread around the villages.
Pammi Shukla is a Digital Sarthak training and mentoring Women Entrepreneurs of Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh. She shares about her experience, “A monotonous schedule, a 9 am to 3 pm job, a teaching career, was all that I had before the onset of the devastating pandemic.
Rekha Kumari is a Digital Sarthak training and mentoring Women Entrepreneurs of Ramgarh, Jharkhand sharing her story, “I have heard stories of inspirational women all over the globe through the means of newspapers or sometimes television channels.
Babli from Nuh, Haryana shares her story, “I come from a social setting where people are riddled with the mentality that a woman is meant for getting married, cleaning, giving birth to kids and then looking after them. This was something that has always disturbed me as a woman myself.
Aarti is a Woman Entrepreneur from Bharatpur, Rajasthan who shares,“Imagine being locked up in a room for years and having missed all the developments that happen in the world outside the confined room.
Neesha is one of the Women Entrepreneurs from Bharatpur, Rajasthan who trained under Digital Sarthak program and she shares her success story, “I was a mother, a housewife and someone who was trying to achieve more than what was expected of me.
“The trip to Assam was one of a kind and also it was my first visit to the state of simplicity, as I would like to call it. But, ‘simplicity’ would be hard to justify if we were to compare the most popular North-Eastern city, Guwahati, with the cultural capital Nagaon.