Zero cost life jacket by kids | Fusion - WeRIndia

When Rishikesh, an 11-year-old Class 6 student, used to spend his time playing on the beaches of Ramanathpuram, he would hear many stories of fishermen drowning at sea.

He was disturbed by all of these tragic tales, and got thinking on what he could do about it.

Thus, he got together four of his other Class 6 friends from the Panchayat Union Middle School: Praveen, Naveenkumar, Marthi, and Guhan, who began to develop a life jacket that could successfully keep a man afloat, and would not cost anything to make.

When Rishikesh saw plastic bottles floating in the sea, an idea began to form of how to do this.

The five students began to research floatation physics through experiments with these plastic bottles.

Their first prototype jacket with about twenty-four bottles seemed to work, even on those who did not know how to swim.

Thus, with this easy and almost cost-free preparation, the five of them sent their invention to the 2014 I CAN Awards, organized by Design for Change, which challenges children to solve the problems in their community.

Design for Change encourages a four-step thinking method: to “feel” for an issue, to then “imagine” a way out of it, to “do” something about it, and then “share” the idea with people.

 

These five students, having actively gone about employing that method into their invention, won the “Boldest Idea” award out of the 1.992 stories that were submitted in 2014, and also got a cash prize of ₹50,000.

The group of five then distributed out their new jackets to the local fishermen, and were eager to work further to spread this idea to other fishermen throughout the country.

Although this idea has surfaced in other places around the world recently, the fact that these boys used their creative abilities of problem solving to discover it on their own marks a wonderful example of the great potential of such an encouraging learning environment.

Image Reference: TheBetterIndia