The lack of ideas and basic resources in rural areas which hinder hands on learning experience to children.

Edu-ity is a project where young enthusiasts in a shared platform mentor a young mind and encourage them to use
locally
available things to enhance their learning experience.

Every child will have equal learning opportunity with proper practical knowledge. Students in rural areas will learn to
use locally available resources through mentors.

Open lab will provide with resources that will help in prototyping a project and a portable Edu-ity Maker kit with basic
materials that will help in integrating the locally available resources.

Is hands-on learning experience possible for everyone and everywhere? Do students in rural areas get equal opportunities
to practical learning as students in urban areas? Many votes turn towards NO. Why do we have this gap in the learning
process? Do we all agree and consider that we learn the best when we actually do things? If yes, why are most of the
students deprived of it?

The concept of hands-on learning is not always necessarily expensive. From my experience in
the past year teaching and mentoring at Karkhana- a maker space based education organization here in Nepal, I can
confidently say that hands-on learning can be achieved even through cost effective resources. For instance, by simply
learning the logistics of placing a pencil on the tip of another or recalling the stone games in which we built tall
towers, we actually can learn concepts of center of mass and center of gravity. Creativity is not something that can be
bought or built at once, instead it is something that is developed through a process. How helpful it would be if we are
able to teach the students some brainstorming techniques! These examples would have given some insights on how hands-on
learning can be affordable and experienced with locally available resources.

How do we reach students at rural areas
with these ideas and interesting projects? Edu-ity is a project in which people who aspire to uplift the hands-on
learning experience in the rural areas will go to the rural areas and mentor the young minds. In a shared and open
platform these people will have shared informations, open opportunities to discuss on various ideas and issues. They be
the mentors who will be teaching kids fishing but not give them fish itself. They will provide the insights on how the
materials and resources lying around them can be used in a different and productive way. These maker mentors can help
students turn a waste lying thick paper into a balloon driven car or a tall paper tower or even something more
interesting.

In this process, all the mentors will have a general Edu-ity Maker-kit in common which would consist of
very simple resources such as LEDs, low volt batteries, some connectors and so on which will help to integrate the local
resources into the projects. I believe Open Lab would be a great platform and support in developing this Maker-kit and
would provide a bigger platform to initiate this program. It would be more grateful if we can see some of the members
from the organizing committee itself mentoring a young mind and encouraging them to make with whatever they see around
them.