Have you been trying to guess what Prikkle Academy Makerspace has been doing during the coronavirus pandemic?” We have answers, this first article shared some of it. This article will give more answers.
At Prikkle Academy, we invest in capacity building – our team members are lifelong learners, our participants are knowledge seekers and we are all exploring, creating and sharing.
Over the past few weeks, our participants have been exploring the power of sowing and reaping. Our participants aren’t just learning and not taking action, they decided to run an experiment.
Vegetables In A Bottle – Prikkle Makerspace
In the past few months, we have seen these flowers below blossom after planting them in plastic buckets.
With insight from Samson Ogbole’s Live session about growing your own food and the agricultural knowledge of our participants, we embarked on a vegetable project in a bottle.
6 of our participants focused on this project and set out a timeline to achieve their aim. They gathered and cleaned out 194 plastic bottles littering the streets, we supported them with purchase of ropes and nail.
All the other tools they needed were readily available in the makerspace.
They planted the vegetable seeds just at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic lockdown and at the end of 3 weeks, the vegetable had grown and harvested.
If you have been thinking of growing your own food, this is a beautiful and exciting project you can start, from the corridor of your house.
At the makerspace, we created a garden and the participants were excited to clear it and plant on their gardens. This is what we call peer-to-peer learning of agricultural skills.
Over the next 2 months, these food crops (cassava, maize and potatoes) that will be harvested 100% for the participants.
Public Speaking For Kids
There is 1 skill that has contributed to most of the success of people around the world. That skill is Communication. This skill has 4 associates – thinking, writing, speaking and listening.
Before the pandemic, we engaged them to come up with topics they will like to discuss and this improved their confidence.
They can freely express themselves among their friends, but it was tough when asked to speak from a stage.
The lockdown gave us more time, space and opportunity to zoom in on the public speaking sessions. We’ve had 27 sessions and our participants have shared up to 32 different topics from 9 participants.
Apart from expert review and feedback, we have encouraged peer-to-peer feedback, based on some criteria.
One of the interesting topics they discussed was “time” and tasks.
In Jamiu’s presentation, he noted that “he who played away his time, has definitely played away his life”. He compared time with money and hinted that “time is money, we should spend it wisely”.
While the lockdown of schools persist, we will make best use of our time.
To share your skills with our participants, as a volunteer, please click here > I want to volunteer for Prikkle Academy.
The work we do to help the gifts of young people blossom from rural communities requires different resources. We need financial, technical, social, economic and environment support.
To donate and help us continue this work, please click here > I want to donate to Prikkle Academy
Written by Jamiu Balogun
