Creativity and innovativeness key to harness youth potential

Kapurthala: Science City organized a webinar to celebrate International Youth Day. More than 100 students and teachers from different educational institutions of Punjab participated in the event.  The theme of International Youth Day 2021 was “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health”. Giving introductory remarks at the occasion, Dr. Neelima Jerath, Director General, Science City said that the event is meant to bring youth issues to the attention of the international community and to celebrate the potential of youth as active partners in the global society. She emphasized the need to develop inclusive support mechanism to ensure that youth continue to amplify efforts collectively and individually to restore the planet and protect life, while integrating biodiversity in the transformation of food systems. Further, youth constitute majority of the population in the country, therefore, can play an important role in the progress and development of the Nation. The Innovation Hub set up at PGSC is meant to nurture the creativity and harness the innovative potential of the youth, she added.
Mr. Manoj Kumar Patel, Principal Scientist, CSIO was the key speaker at this occasion. He has the distinction of being a CSIR Young Scientist awardee and six innovations to his credit at a young age of 33. During his address he said that, energy, creativity, enthusiasm, determination, and spirit of youth needs to be strengthened to achieve progress in the field of science & technology. In his motivational address, he urged the youth to think innovatively and find the scientific solutions to the common issues faced by the society in daily life. He also shared his innovations at the occasion on development of electronic smog-control device to fight pollutants and eco-friendly spray technology to protect agriculture land as well as farmers from excessive use of pesticides.
Dr. Rajesh Grover, Director Science City present at the occasion said that youth empowerment can curb the rate of poverty to a large level. One of the keys to empower the youth is with skill development. When a youth is equipped with essential skills, he or she can utilize them to feed, assist others, and drives a nation towards success and prosperity.