Team:IISER Berhampur/Communication

iGEM IISER_Berhampur 2021
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Introduction

Nothing in science has any value to society if it were not communicated.

As we worked out the different aspects of our project, a general realization dawned upon us. While Tuberculosis is a more than a century, old disease, people still were not aware of its far more notorious forms. So along with our efforts to control the progression of MDR TB from India, we took it upon ourselves to make the general public aware of this terrifying disease and the implications of our project. The process of communication is a very trivial but important step in mass education. We tried our best interactive methods to attract the crowd to our cause. This would be documenting both our timeline, benefits and pitfalls of our efforts and at the end, we shall wrap it up with a small survey that will show what difference we made in the world of MDR TB. As rightly spoken by Eckhart Tolle “ Awareness is the greatest agent for change ”. Through the CODE-M project, we the students hope to be the change that shall eventually make India TB aware and more importantly TB free.

Awareness Programs

Why is awareness even needed?

A burning question at this point should be why is awareness even important. It is difficult to find solutions to the problems unless you have first-hand accounts of the events. To understand this we had an interview with Radhika Jagtap, who is actively involved in social service helping out less privileged patients through some private initiatives. She fought her own battle with MDR-TB and is now trying to promote awareness. From the accounts of Radhika Jagtap, we got to know the root of the problem. It is not the bacteria itself but the fact that patients cannot afford to stay quarantined during the infectious period because of the basic living requirements. This leads to the increased spread of these strains. This was a big realization for us. Our device is aimed at rapid diagnosis of the disease. It targets the disease at its root and the team took it upon themselves to make people aware and minimize the spread along with brainstorming ideas to help the underprivileged. Different activities done as a part of science communication are

  • Podcast
  • School awareness program
  • Social media awareness
  • Booklet distribution
  • Survey

Our awareness programmes were delivered in an age specific way. We delivered our messages in such a way that the target audience could easily perceive it and imbibe it. We had two such programmes.

School Awareness Programme

School awareness program 1

People say that “Children are the rock on which our future will be built”. Hence we decided to make them aware by educating them about tuberculosis (TB) and multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). This was our first awareness programme targeting high school students aged above 14 years and was held on 24th of May 2021. Because of the COVID-19 lockdown we had to reach out to them via online platforms. Despite the pandemic we managed to have more than 100 students all over India representing various schools from different states.

List of schools-

  • Carmel high school dps ruby park, Kolkata
  • Sree Narayan public school, Kerala
  •  City Montessori School, Luckhnow
  • Brundaban Nayak English medium school, Odisha
  • Aum Valley School ,Odisha
  • The nilgiri matriculation higher secondary school,Ooty
  • Berlin public school, Ranchi
  • Brilliant Matriculation higher secondary school, Tamil Nādu
  • SNEH International school, New Delhi
  • Mulund Vidya Mandir & Jr. College, Mumbai
  • St. Lawrence High School, Thane west ,Mumbai, Maharashtra
  • Mahaveer English school, Maharashtra

Pie chart of the age group we are targeting

pie chart of which age group we are targeting

We named the event as The Tale of scrofula”. Scrofula or “King’s evil”  is a term implying infection of lymph nodes of the neck with tuberculosis. The event started with a presentation made by the fellow teammates detailing TB, emergence and spread of MDR-TB, its severity and treatment procedure. A major challenge that we anticipated was to keep the young kids interested during the presentation. Hence we simplified our presentation so that it was easily understandable and was followed by an interactive session. We integrated different details and fun facts about MDR TB in a “treasure hunt ” where we divided students in teams and in this manner we tried to make the students integrate the different details of this disease as well as the steps  necessary  in case symptoms of the disease are observed.It started with small basic questions like “ where was first MDR TB observed in india” and there were other conceptual questions following it. We believe nowadays access to the internet is a necessity for education, so every student was encouraged to look up the information and solve it through a series of cryptic messages and code. After solving them they finally reached the conclusion. This type of event ensures less stress on memorising and more on application. 

Self evaluation forms were then sent out to the students in the beginning and the end of the event to judge what they integrated throughout the event. It was encouraging to see that 48% of the students showed better results after the event giving us the positive confirmation that we were successful in our endeavour.


School awareness program 2

In our second attempt we decided to reach out to the local underprivileged students. They belong to several government high schools in the state of Odisha, where there is a significant burden of tuberculosis. We talked about synthetic biology and how we are trying to make a difference for the MDR TB patients using synthetic biology. At the end we had arranged a drawing competition in which the children from class 8 to class 10 portrayed their visions of synthetic biology on a paper.

ART WORKS WE RECEIVED : Click on the buttons to scroll through the drawings

Social Media Outreach

The quarantine had perpetually made social media the lifeline for all those with smartphones. We had a mixed audience with 70% people of the age group 18-27 and 30% above the age of 27 years. With a series of interactive posts and quizzes, we could engage more than thousands of people in our feed. We had a series of posts starting from what is iGEM, followed by our project, its importance, outreach followed by all the necessary information required by any non-academician to understand the project. We made the posts interactive with the quizzes and polls.

Our posts gained huge reach and were promoted by social figures and were much appreciated by them. Any social problem can be solved by the collaborative contribution of the general mass. Our awareness and ability to respond quickly during a time of crisis can save many lives. We took it upon ourselves to engage such people in activities that would bring the current crisis of MDR TB to the forefront of many discussions. With a reach of more than 3000 retweets on our Twitter, we confirm that we could spread our message as much as possible. 

Mythbuster Series

While interacting with several persons suffering from this disease we came to know that it is one of the most misinterpreted diseases especially in India. Hence we took the initiative to start a Mythbusters series. We named it “Let’s Debunk the Myth”. We tried to clarify some of the prevailing misconceptions about TB picture

Comic Strip

COMIC STRIP - IGEM WARRIORS- RISE OF THE PHOENIX!

This was our attempt to communicate to the general mass and present our project ideas and synthetic biology in a fun, attractive and colourful way. The title of the comic strip was “IGEM WARRIORS- RISE OF THE PHOENIX!”. Our comic strip will take you to the post-pandemic era. We took a collaborative approach to reach a wider audience and we are overjoyed with the response we received from iGEM teams from all around the globe.  Each chapter of this comic tells you about how the specific team plans to solve a social issue of the post-pandemic era. The objective of this event was to bring about international ideas, compile them into a visually appealing and interesting comic series that can easily spread awareness about MDR TB. It also implies the significance of synthetic biology and how iGEM is shaping the future of synthetic biology throughout the series. The significance of the name Warriors -Rise of The Phoenix is -   even after infinite difficulties the iGEM warriors would not give up. They would rise like a phoenix from the ashes and learn to survive again. This comic strip was then distributed amongst the common mass for everyone 's benefit.

READ THE COMICS HERE : Click on the buttons to scroll through the comics

Podcast

There are different ways to communicate effectively in a workplace and what better way to communicate science than via a podcast. We started a podcast namely SynVerse. This gave us a platform to communicate and convey some scientific facts and also we could convey the answers to some prevailing questions regarding microbes, synthetic biology and antibiotic resistance. Also, we got the chance to have other igem teams on our special Round Table Episodes. It was a nice experience interacting with them and to know what they are up to in this iGEM session.

Spotify link- https://open.spotify.com/show/2YjM79XJoNAYxbxugbq7Gx?si=p6or8GiDS7-T65Neo3wqtQ&utm_source=native-share-menu

Inventa

Inventa is a student-led science magazine that was developed by the students of 10 National institutes across India for science communication and outreach in the public sphere.

We are lucky enough to get a chance to talk about molecular diagnostic techniques and CRISPR cas technique and how these techniques are going to help us in MDR TB detection on such a big platform./p>

Jigyansa blog

Jigyansa is a regional bilingual science communication platform. One of our team members, Akankshya Sahu has published a blog in collaboration with Jigyansa, regarding iGEM competition, our team’s objectives, their implications for society, public health, and the future prospects of our project in local language as well as in English.

LINK: https://jigyansaiiserbpr.blogspot.com/2021/10/rewriting-software-of-life.html?m=1

CRISPR talks

In the grand collaboration event iGCC, reputable speakers SUNDARAM ACHARYA and BASUDEB MAJI delivered talks to the other international iGEM teams as well as non iGEM participants successfully spreading the message and importance of CRISPR in contemporary research.

We also invited iGEM teams to present “ How they are using CRISPR and synthetic biology to solve local problems” to the audience.