Recently two of our Inventure students, Shivjeet, Grade 9 and Driti, Grade 11 were chosen as part of the first round of young journalists to launch Going To School’s “Children’s Scrappy News” series in Karnataka, for a segment called “Meet Hero Entrepreneur”.
Going to School is a creative not-for-profit education trust working to reach children in India for 11 years. They create role models for children, stories to inspire children to learn entrepreneurial skills at school, and provide support for under-privileged young people to start businesses that solve local social problems.
As an extension to this program, Going to School seeks out student journalists & correspondents, from schools throughout India, to interview entrepreneur heroes & role models for their news series called “Children’s Scrappy News”. This weekly 7 minute news program airs on YouTube for a global children’s audience.
Our Inventure student correspondents, Shivjeet & Driti learned about social business ideas that solve problems for entire communities, and had the opportunity to spend a whole day with real life young entrepreneurs and learn new skills, as well as take a fast-track training course in journalism. Their work was based in Tumkur, but their news coverage took them on location for 2 days in Gubbi and 2 days in Kunigal. They and their parent chaperones were taken aback with the professionalism of the shoot, and found the experience quite exciting. The Go To School team thought they were “an amazing bunch of kids!”
Now read about Shivjeet & Driti’s experiences in their own words:
My Discovery Of The Real India
Life in the cities is so much different from life in the villages. The villagers face so many hardships and many of the things we take for granted, are gifts to them. Over the course of these four days, my eyes have been opened and my attitude towards life has changed.
The purpose of the trip was to make documentaries on our rural heroes- Entrepreneurs who have changed life in their villages. The agenda for the first two days was to go to a small village just on the outskirts of Tumkur. There we met a man who is considered the Water God of the village. Sripal, an engineer, fixes borewells and brings water to people’s farms, solving their problems during a drought. He doesn’t know English, he doesn’t use computers and yet he is considered a hero by the farmers.
The second two days were the real fun days. We got an inside look at the growth of the vegetables we eat for our meals. Bhanuprakash, a man who runs a greenhouse, told us why he creates saplings and about his passion for his job. He says that by giving farmers saplings it reduces the time it takes for them to grow crops from scratch. They are able to get their produce much faster.
By the end of this four day period, I learnt how a borewell works, how it is dug and repaired, how to plant seeds and how to manage a greenhouse. More importantly, we got an insight into how hard and strenuous life in the village is. But, that is the villager’s life and that’s how they like it. This is the Real India to me.
By Shivjeet Parthasarathy, Grade 9
My Experience with Scrappy News!!
Scrappy News, as the name suggests, was just as scrappy and fun as it could be. It was a wonderful experience for me as I want to pursue journalism. My days with Scrappy News team at Gubbi and Kunigal were filled with cameras, mike, action, fun, retakes, scrappy dances, extra shots, hunger, speaking, crowd and what not.
Scrappy News is basically a platform to showcase how a farmer or a person who fixes a borewell can become an entrepreneur, a HERO to his fellow mates and the people in his village or town. It was a program shot in Kannada particularly. We interviewed a man named Sripal who repairs borewells and helped farmers and another man called Banu Prakash, who set up a nursery (green house) to grow plants which needs a certain temperature to promote growth. For example, chillies, egg plant, pumpkins etc.
This was an opportunity that helped me understand 3 different kinds of professions: an engineer (Mr.Sripal), a farmer (Mr.Banu Prakash) and a news reporter, that was me (Driti Prasad), Shivjeet and four other students from a school called Parikrma.
During the process I learned that there would be small disputes among each other, maybe for roles or stating opinions or for various other things, but what matters is how you work through it to make your video the best – ‘UNITY IN DIVERSITY‘. It also taught me how it would be to stand there in the hot sun or in the rain, however your setting is, and do your best to finish it in one shot as the more time you take the longer you have to stay out there in the open. For example, in one of the scenes we had to go to a market and interview the vegetable sellers, and as we know markets have many people and too much noise, so we had to finish it as fast as possible so we could leave the place because there were many people standing around us, and the roads were not empty so we had to clear them as they were getting supplies.
In the end, I learned to live together, work together, have fun together and give it your BEST!! It was a remarkable experience as there were so many new things to learn and explore. It has made a big difference in my life as it helped me decide my career and helped me understand this field of news reporting thoroughly.
Lastly, I would like to thank our Principal, Mallika Ma’am and Nooraine Ma’am for creating this wonderful opportunity, Lavanya Ma’am for helping me throughout the process, Shivjeet for being my companion from Inventure, my mother for supporting me and coming to the place with me, and lastly the entire crew of SCRAPPY NEWS (director, cameraman, sound check, translators, organizers and the other student reporters).
By Driti Prasad, Grade 11