The winners of the Dr APJ Abdul Kalam IGNITE 2016 Competition, received their awards from President, Shri Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi, today.
Speaking on the occasion, the Union Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, Dr. Harsh Vardhan,congratulated all the winners and said he was really amazed by the range of creativity expressed by these young minds.
The Minister further said, that the “many wonderful ideas coming from children from diverse backgrounds and regions, goes to show how much pervasive the spirit of creativity and innovation is in our country”.
Addressing the young winners, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, said that they have a duty not to adapt to the problems our society is facing but transcend them and to help India become a creative, compassionate and collaborative society. Given the various challenges the country faces and may face in this 21st century, “we will need an army of young people like you who would help the Government and society by identifying and addressing problems faced in day to day life and also likely to be faced in the long term. I am sure you all will live up to our collective expectations”.
Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam IGNITE 2016 competition –is a national competition of original technological ideas and innovations by children up to class 12 or those out of school up to the age of 17 years -it is organized by National Innovation Foundation(NIF) every year to promote creativity and originality among children.
The awards of IGNITE competition are announced every year on October 15th, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam’s birthday, which is celebrated as the Children’s Creativity and Innovation Day by NIF.
Starting in 2008, in the last eight years, 173 awards have been given to 246 children. This year, a total of 31 students have been awarded for their ideas/innovations (List of award winners annexed). Overall, 55,089 submissions of students from 458 districts of all the states & Union Territories of India were received during the IGNITE 16 competition, which ran from September 1, 2015 to August 31, 2016.
An exhibition showcasing award winning ideas has been put up at the venue. NIF will file patents in all applicable cases in the name of the students and will also engage designers/fabricators to develop prototypes of the students’ ideas.
NIF, an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has been actively engaged in promoting creativity and innovation in our society with active support of Honey Bee Network. NIF has taken major initiatives to serve the knowledge-rich but economically poor people of the country. It is committed to making India innovative by documenting, adding value, protecting the intellectual property rights (IPR) of the contemporary unaided technological innovators as well as of outstanding traditional knowledge-holders and disseminating their innovations on commercial and non-commercial basis.
Dr APJ Abdul Kalam IGNITE Award is an effort to focus primarily on the creativity of the children and promote inclusive and compassionate thinking among them.
