Updates: Delivers Personal Protective Equipments to North Macedonia . . .
SRISTI, which means creation in Sanskrit, was born in 1993, to support the activities of the Honey Bee Network (1987-88) to recognize, respect and reward creativity at the grassroots level.
SRISTI, as a developmental voluntary organization strengthens the spirit of creativity and innovations by knowledge-rich, economically poor individuals and communities. It builds bridges between informal and formal science, protects intellectual property rights of grassroots innovators and helps in conserving and augmenting biodiversity and associated knowledge systems.
It supports eco-friendly solutions to local problems being scouted, spawned and spread by the Honey Bee Network volunteers for the last 27 years. It also nurtures ecopreneurs engaged in conserving biodiversity, common property resources, cultural diversity and educational innovations. There are five pillars of Honey Bee Network which SRISTI is committed to backstop:
[1] Educational innovations by school and college students, teachers, and other stakeholders;
[2] Institutional innovations at community and other levels in managing natural and other resources,
[3] Cultural creativity so that curiosity, collaboration, and compassion grow through art, literature and crafts; [4] Technological innovations and traditional knowledge dealing with human, animal, plant and ecosystem health, and
[5] Policy reforms to generate frugal innovations for sustainable development at all levels, with specific reference to youth, children, women and elderly.
Essentially, it aims at improving access of knowledge-rich, economically poor people to various informal and formal institutional resources to trigger self-reliant development process as per the Gandhian ethics and principles.
Systematic documentation and dissemination of and value addition in green grassroots innovations and supporting biotechnological innovations by communities, technology students and others for a sustainable future.
Providing intellectual property rights protection and risk capital support.
Extending necessary support for in-situ and ex-situ conservation of local biodiversity and associated knowledge system.
Empowering the knowledge-rich, economically poor people by adding value to their innovations, traditional knowledge and associated biological diversity including microbial diversity.
Linking formal and informal science to enrich both the knowledge systems, build databases of innovations by farmers, artisans, mechanics, technology students, teachers and other social innovators.
Providing early stage risk capital and mentoring support to grassroots innovators, students and other mavericks to scale up their products and services which are based on grassroots innovations through
commercial or non-commercial channels. Embedding the insights learnt from grassroots innovations in the formal educational, policy and institutional systems in order to expand the conceptual, cognitive, institutional and policy space available to these innovations.
(SIIE), SRISTI-BioNEST is an innovation and grassroots distinctive traditional knowledge based business incubator, an entity funded by BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India). Innovations based on ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking, traditional knowledge, grassroots level knowledge systems, ideas of university students and even children are supported for successful product development and commercialization. Innovations from both formal and informal sectors are supported. The incubator caters to sectors like biotechnology, biological sciences, environmental sciences, food technology, medical science and technology, nanotechnology, pharmacy, rural development and other allied areas. Currently there are 28 incubatees incubated at SIIE-SRISTI BioNEST.
The Children’s Creativity and Co-creation Workshops aims to empower children to not only identify and articulate their own problems but also identify an try to solve problems of socially disadvantaged segments, individually and/or collectively. This workshop aims to involve children in solving the social challenges faced by community and thus help us mobilize the creative potential of children around the world. The aim is to overcome persistent social inertia in emerging and sometimes even in advanced geographical regions. It is hoped that many of these children will grow into empathetic, creative, and compassionate leaders in future and will try to work towards making an inclusive and sustainable society.
Teachers as Transformers is the initiative of Educational Innovations Bank (EI Bank), which is partnered with SRISTI and Honey Bee Network and based at the Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (RJMCEI-IIMA). EI Bank is a clearing house for effective educational innovations developed and implemented by elementary school teachers working in the public system. Teachers in the public system continue to play an important role in ensuring education for the marginalized sections of our society. In spite of the increase in the share of private sector enrolment, the precariously placed socio-economic strata will continue to depend on this system in the foreseeable future. However, the quality and other educational outcomes of the public system have often been criticized for their less than desirable levels. The EI Bank assumes that top-down reform is necessary but not sufficient: learning from those who have performed in spite of constraints that are common to many teachers, valorizing and supplementing their work and converting this work into a resource, will expose teachers to a solution-augmenting approach to local educational reform, and motivate them.
The concept of Shodh Sankal (a chain of experimenting farmers) to generate a lateral learning environment among grassroots innovators was started by SRISTI in 1996. The idea was to bring together experimenting farmers and discuss the results of trials that farmers have taken up on their own to solve various local problems. The discussion also enhances the esteem for local knowledge systems apart from speeding up the process of technological change in regions where formal technology generation system has not been very successful – such as dry regions, mountainous regions and other disadvantaged areas.
The main objective of Social Innovation Fund (SIF) is to provide mentoring-, financial-, fabrication-, validation- support, and value addition facilities in labs, fields, and R&D Institutions for nurturing creativity in culture, education, technology, and governance.
A sec 8 company was set up with the objective of strengthening the capacity of grassroots inventors, innovators and ecopreneurs in the area of conserving biodiversity and developing eco-friendly solution to local problems and is engaged inter alia in the areas of documentation, experimentation, search, development and diffusion of sustainable technologies and institutions. It now hosts the BioNEST incubator besides publishing HBN newsletters and other books in Hindi, Gujarati and English languages. It also develops commercialization products ensuring a fair share of benefits going back to knowledge providing communities.
Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) Awards celebrates the spirit of students’ innovation in engineering, biotechnology, agriculture, pharmacy, material science, design and other applied technological domains through extremely affordable/frugal solutions or the ones pushing the technological edge. It is SRISTI initiative to foster youth-driven tech innovations. Gandhian Young Technological Innovation Awards 2020 were given virtually by the former Union Health Minister of India Shri Harsh Vardhan on November 05, 2020.
SATTVIK is the festival to celebrate traditional nutritious food and associated knowledge systems. It was started fourteen years ago at IIMA to provide market based incentives for conserving agro-biodiversity and creation of demand for rarely or less cultivated nutritionally rich crops and varieties to stimulate their cultivation. In the regions with low rainfall, minerals inside of the soil don’t leach much and hence crops which are grown there- like millets, sorghum, and pulses- are rich in nutritional value. The paradox of development is that the food that rich eat is often poor while food that poor grow (in poorer regions) is rich in nutritional value. This festival aspires to put the lesser known but nutrient-rich food from various states on the plate of urban communities, helping them to adopt healthier food habits and lifestyle. The festival also hopes to encourage farmers to grow more nutrition-rich crops and thus help them in augmenting their incomes. http://sattvik.sristi.org/
Shodhyatra is a journey in some of the remotest areas of the country to search for knowledge, creativity, and innovations at the grassroots. It is an attempt on the part of SRISTI with a firm belief that the hardships and challenges of natural surroundings are prime motivators of creativity and innovations. It aims at unearthing such traditional knowledge and grassroots innovations. It is also a journey of mutual exchange and sharing of knowledge. Whatever knowledge and practices that are pooled in over various Shodhyatras are also shared back with the villagers during subsequent Shodhyatras, along with sharing of the various databases of the Honey Bee Network. During Shodhyatras also include women and children to display their ecological knowledge through recipe and children competitions respectively. Over the past 22 years, 46 Shodhyatras have been organised covering all the states of the country. https://www.sristi.org/shodhyatra/
SRISTI believes that adding value to indigenous knowledge will help local communities co-exist with biodiversity by reducing primary extraction and generating long term benefits. Such an approach will lead to augmenting sustainable resource use and livelihood support systems. it converts local knowledge and resources into value added products with simultaneous development of processing facilities in rural region where natural resources exist but not enough in situ value addition takes place.more at http://www.sristi.org/sristi-lab/
Academy for Augmenting Sustainable Technological Inventions, Innovations, and Traditional Knowledge (AASTIIK) began as an independent programme in 2005. It aims at creating a virtual and real knowledge community of professionals and experts in the field of invention, innovation and traditional knowledge.
Techpedia, an initiative of SRISTI, aims at putting the problems of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), informal sector, grassroots innovators and other social sectors on the agenda of young technology students across the country. For the past sixty years, India has not utilised much of the technological outputs of millions of students. But, this apathy will continue no more. Can a knowledge society really afford to ignore the huge talent, distributed in thousands of polytechnics, diploma and degree colleges of engineering, pharmacy, medical science, agriculture etc.? SRISTI is providing a platform for the industry and academic institutions to collaborate, cocreate and foster distributed and horizontal frugal innovations.
Promotion of originality among technology students by making it impossible for them to repeat what has already been done before. This will be possible only when they can find out what has been done before. Techpedia has 204,000 technology projects done by about 600,000 students from more than 600 colleges in India.
Connecting the technical students with the problems of informal unorganised sectors and grassroots innovators.
To harness collaborative potential of students across disciplines and colleges to solve persistent problems of our country in formal and informal sectors.
Explore kho kho model (relay) of product development; the idea is that if one student group has brought the solution of a particular problem to a specific stage, the next group of the same/other department should be able to build upon it and take it forward.
To pose challenges for students to address unsolved problems of our society. Gandhiji had announced an award of 7,700 pounds (Rs 100,000) to redesign charkha (spinning wheel). Today, the value of this prize will be more than Rs 10 crore. Industry association, government and others can offer attractive prizes for solving those problems which have remained unsolved for so long.
Developing high-tech capabilities through network platforms so that India becomes a hub for high-tech outsourcing for the world in future and does not serve only the low-tech needs.
Promoting both IPR protected and open-source technology and eventually develop techpedia.in into an online virtual sanctuary of innovations and not just an incubator.
Creating real-time online National Mentoring Network (NMN) to harness skills, insights and experiences of senior tech experts, for mentoring young students. Also, remote reverse mentoring by young start-ups and students.
Encourage some of the innovations through SRISTI Social Innovation Fund, set up recently to promote frugal and extremely affordable socially useful ideas.
Leverage policy and institutional changes to make innovation ecosystem more responsive to societal needs and aspirations of young talent.
Organize summer schools to address specific social challenges so that young students can try to overcome institutional inertia by coming out with new prototypes for removing child labour, enhance women safety or supporting autonomy of physically-challenged people etc.
Build global linkages so that collaborative open-innovation models, pioneered by the Honey Bee Network, are further diffused among student communities worldwide.
The children creativity workshops are organized see the societal inertia through the children eyes. They are empowered to do research and identify the unmet social needs, and suggest solution. Later, the engineering and other students take some of these ideas besides others for fabricating solutions for addressing these problems.Purpose is to generate extremely affordable solutions over next three weeks which improve the quality of life of poor children, women, workers and other disadvantaged social segments. It is possible that solutions developed during summer school may not be fully finished. We will give opportunity to some of the participants or external designer to finish these in coming months in partnership with the potential users.
Even if some of the problems remain unsolved, there will be better appreciation of the pathways that will not resolve these problems. SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions) has organized this Summer School on Inclusive Innovation through open, reciprocal and responsible frame work guided by the Honey Bee Network Philosophy. It is hoped that young students will learn not to be patient with inertia. They may be sharpen their perceptions to learn the transition from samvedana to srijansheelta (empathetic way of creative problem solving).
A palm leaf broom maker has to beat the leaves on a wooden plank mounted with nails to tear a leaf into fine fibres. The drudgery involved in this act drains much of the energy of women who generally do this task.
Similarly, hundreds of thousands of tribals have to crack mahua nut to get the seed out for oil extraction. The construction workers carry brick on their heads straining their necks and spines.
Women in Saurashtra and many other regions get hurt while harvesting the fruits from cactus like opuntia growing on the field bunds. Amla harvesting in the forest often involves cutting branches rather than just harvesting the fruits.
These and many other problems have been mobilized by the Honey Bee Network to challenge the young people to design solution to get over the indifference or inertia of formal design and technology institutions.
Every institution in the country will have to take the responsibility of mapping the unmet social needs in their hinterland and address them through student projects and summer and winter schools. Like every initiative that Honey Bee Network has taken, it may take years before policy and institutional reforms follow. The structure of governance in any society cannot remain indifferent to the persistent problems of the disadvantaged people for too long.
Email: summerschool@sristi.org Web: ss.sristi.org
In the memory of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the Honey Bee Network, SRISTI, and GIAN have jointly organized an annual competition of innovative ideas by students. Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Children Ignited Mind Creativity and Innovation Award competition accepts entries from students up to class 12 and also from school dropouts. This award aims to develop a culture of the “Samvedna” among children to find solutions to the local problems addressing unmet social needs. The idea is to make children aware of the problems and hardships which are faced by common people in their day-to-day life, problems with which many of us have learned to adjust and adopt. It is believed that if children start becoming impatient with social inertia at an early age, it is likely that they will bring about more creative and compassionate changes in the society as they grow up.
SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions) in collaboration with BIRAC (Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council, Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India) has been organizing a three-week SITARE BIIS (Students Innovations for Translation & Advancement of Research Explorations-Biotech Innovation Ignition School) for validating, value-adding and product development around grassroots innovations since 2017. The BIIS tries to develop solutions for grassroots applications for humans, animals, and agricultural applications including herbal technologies, medical devices, and microbial applications.
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, we have conducted BIIS (BIIS-5: June 8- June 27, 2020, BIIS-6: September 22- October 12, 2020, BIIS-7: December 1- December 21, 2020, BIIS-8: January 25 – February 14, 2021 and BIIS-9: May 20-June 9, 2021)course as a webinar, where the prime focus has been to build the capacity of primarily undergraduate students to develop skills in the field of phytochemistry, pharmacognosy, extraction, separation of compounds, microbial diversity screening, pest control, development of extremely affordable solutions for farmers, livestock keepers, pastoralists, human applications, besides patent, biostatistics and ethical guidelines for work on grassroots knowledge and innovations.
The topics for the online course BIIS are designed based on the following fields and as a part of webinar we will assign some projects to the students primarily in five action-research areas drawing upon the Honey Bee Network Database:
Pharmacognosy/Phytochemistry – SRISTI’s Grassroots database contains many traditional knowledge practices as well as contemporary innovations from across the country. These projects would involve validation/ value addition to these practices. A few of these practices are presented here- http://www.sristi.org/ hbnew/honeybee_database.php
Soil Microbiology-SRISTI has a Microbial diversity bank containing 8000+ organisms (bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes) isolated from the soil samples collected during ShodhYatras (learning walks for scouting and sharing innovations and local practices) in different parts of the country (http://www.sristi.org/cms/shodhyatra). An extensive study of screening these isolated microbes for novel human, animal, and agricultural applications would be conducted.
Veterinary Medicine- Validation of traditional practices for the improvement of livestock health, nutrition, and productivity.
Agriculture- validation of grassroots practices by conducting trials in the lab, on the station, and in the field for product development/improvement.
Medical devices- Value addition/product development of any of the open-source projects listed on our summer school website (http://summerschool.sristi.org/) or medical devices for human and animal health care or meeting any other unmet social needs.
Students pursuing bachelors programs in life sciences can apply. The student should have a valid ID issued by the Institution/University. A few seats are reserved for post graduates too. In exceptional cases, even school children with interesting ideas may be considered.
The reading material for each subject will be shared with the selected students in advance. The participants would be expected to do literature review before joining the school. These students will be having expert lecture of various life science fields like, microbiology, agriculture, medical devices, biostatistics, phytochemical extraction procedures, live experiments and demonstration of various lab equipment (AAS, HPTLC, HPLC, ELISA, PCR, BSL-I & II etc.) during the webinar. They are likely to develop a project proposal as well as work plan. These students would receive an expert feedback on their proposals from the reviewers.
The assignment, quiz and work done by students during the BIIS webinar will be assessed on the last day of the school. The outstanding studies (up to 10 per BIIS) may be identified for further support of INR 1 lakh each as SITARE-Appreciation Award Grant. The grantees are expected to conduct further research on the topic given either at home institution or at SRISTI lab.
Above all, students would get an invaluable opportunity to interact with both national and international experts as well as grassroots practitioners/innovators in their respective fields. It is hoped that each participant becomes a volunteer of the Honey Bee Network which has helped in scouting and disseminating rural creativity and innovation over the last three decades. All the output will be credited to the grassroots knowledge providers and can be published thereafter with prior written concurrence of the BIIS team and knowledge providers.
Highest ethical code of biotech research is expected to be followed. Team spirit and willingness to develop open source solutions will be highly encouraged. Peer learning will be strongly encouraged. The findings will be shared with knowledge providers in local language with the help of SRISTI and Honey Bee Network team.
Undergraduate student from life sciences can apply through the link https//birac.nic.in/ gyti_registration.php?scheme_type=23
