A Nation wide Campaign to harness the creative and innovative spirit of school children by National Innovation Foundation (NIF) and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).
The main feature of the project has been one of promoting innovative thinking not confined to an isolated few but as a pervasive characteristic of all children. As a value addition the project has served as a stress reducing feature of regular curriculum transaction and an activity to promote original thinking and problem solving ability. This venture had a remarkable response from the students, teachers and the parents. While 961 entries were received during IGNITE 2008 the number rose to 1344 from 21 states in the IGNITE 2009 campaign. The awards for the original contributions and innovations submitted for the IGNITE 2009 competition were given away in an exhibition cum award function by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Former President on 30th November, 2009 at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Website: http://nif.org.in/ignite/index.php
Encouraged by such an overwhelming response the collaborative project "IGNITE 2010", is being taken forward by the Board in the new academic session 201011.
The schedule for the IGNITE 2010 is as per details given below:
a. Date of Announcement of the competition by July 23, 2010.
b. The last date for submission of entries directly to NIF at the following address or through email at ignite10@nifindia.org is September 15th, 2010
IGNITE 2010
National Innovation Foundation, India Bungalow 1, Satellite Complex, Premchand Nagar Road, Vastrapur Ahmedabad 380015, Gujarat
c. Call for entries from students as per the following categories:
i. Technological ideas to solve any problem in day to day life
ii. Real life technological projects demonstrating innovative ways of solving problems or reducing drudgery or generating efficiency or conserving resources (projects demonstrating application of
known scientific concepts or theories will not be accepted).
iii. Traditional knowledge practices documented from elders in and around one's family.
iv. Information about some other innovators in the neighborhood
d. Each entry should be accompanied with a certificate from parents and teachers saying that the idea / innovation has been developed and documented by the student concerned entirely on his / her own without any
guidance or support from them.
e. The awards will be announced on October 15, 2010, birthday of Hon'ble former President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam celebrated as Children's Creativity and Innovation Day. The awards will be given away by Dr. Kalam at his convenience soon after.
f. NIF will provide support for patenting and incubating innovative projects into products in all deserving cases. NIF has already filed patents for first award winner in IGNITE'07, and selected winners of the IGNITE 08 and IGNITE 09 competitions. Many award winners have been interviewed at the national and international level also.
We request you to give wide publicity to this competition amongst students, teachers and parents so as to activate the creative instinct in children to find solutions to the day-to-day problems. We also request you to persuade every class teacher to motivate students to pursue innovative ideas and projects during summer vacation. Further schools are also requested to start the Honey Bee Creativity Clubs (Clubs in school that promote creativity and innovation among children, projects done/ideas and innovations conceived by student members of the club may be linked to NIF during the IGNITE campaign or otherwise) as part of their enrichment activities if they have not already initiated action in this regard.
