This innovation comes all the way from Africa. The young nine-year old Stephen came up with a brilliant idea of washing one’s hands without touching a tap or the soap dispenser !
See the video at this link – https://www.facebook.com/285361880228/posts/10158650507610229/
There is a paddle that you step on and it flips the soap dispenser to dispense soap and another paddle that does the same thing with the water can.
What caught my attention was Stephen credited his innovation to the competency-based curriculum that he is exposed to at school. I mentor Betty, an amazing young woman based in Mombasa, Kenya, and she is trying to do exactly this – provide vocational skills to young people so that they can earn a living.
Its time to review our school curriculum in India too… the crazy fixation that we have for Engineering and Medical degrees must reduce a bit and more people must get skilled. There is a dearth of skilled plumbers, electricians, masons, carpenters, machinists, OT technicians, automobile repair mechanics etc. These jobs will never go out of fashion and someone skilled will earn a lot more than an Engineer who has no aptitude for engineering and just has a degree.
If just this one aspect changes in India, we will have a lot more innovation and employment numbers will also go up. Skilled labour must be respected and paid well.
Lockdown learning – my dear friend Bobby and I were chatting and he told me that all plumbers in India come from one village/district in Odisha !! I didn’t know that. In such a vast country like ours, just one village/district supplies all the plumbers, amazing, right ? Hope this changes soon and we have skilled plumbers from different parts of our country.
#LockdownLearnings #LockdownInnovation
With all due respect,
Such a device has already been invented by a jawan of the Indian army
I have seen the video and I will try to find the link so that I can send it to you.
But having said this, I still appreciate the thought and efforts of the kid… He may not have heard about the device and he deserves appreciation.
Agree with you. Am sure there are similar devices invented by others. Like you said, I think it’s just that a nine year old boy couldn’t have known about them and has come up with it. 👍 Just trying to focus on the positive news during these times :).