Sandesh Felicitates Modern Day Gyan Gurus

A six-month long drive to instill interest towards science amongst school children; also fulfilling the broader objective of making newspaper reading a habit amongst kids. Over 50000 school children from rural and urban Gujarat showcase their talent in research and presentation of various scientific subjects.

Ahmedabad, India, May 09, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Sandesh, leading Gujarati news daily with over 65 lakh readers across the state of Gujarat, has always been at the forefront when it comes to playing the role of a guide to its readers. Its recent ‘Vote India Vote’ campaign is a very good example of its prowess in making an impact. So, when the world celebrated International Science Day last year on 10th November, Sandesh kick-started a unique programme that extended beyond a mere one-day celebration of the occasion.

On the day Sandesh launched ‘Gyan Guru contest’, a sixth-month long campaign that involved a daily section on a scientific topic giving brief information about it. The topics ranged from planet Earth, solar energy, important inventors and their inventions like the telephone, airplane, computer, car, light bulb etc. This section featured a new topic each day and this went on for 180 days, non-stop. Students were asked to create a scrap book wherein they would paste the clipping of the article along with whatever additional information they could find on the subject with the help of their parents and teachers. Along with the scrap book they were also asked to create a scientific project of their choice on any one of the topics featured during the campaign. Criteria for participation were that students should have read and worked on at least 120 out of the 180 topics featured during the campaign.

At the end of six months, Sandesh found that at least 15000 entries had qualified for the winning awards in various categories.

The top prize, titled GYANESHWAR was given in the form of Rs. 1 lakh cash. This bumper prize required an exceptionally brilliant project and a scrap book comprising research on all the 180 titles covered in the campaign. The next category was called GYANRATNA, under which Sandesh gave away 6 laptops to the winners. This was followed by 6 GYANSHASTRI award winners who took home a computer each. About 1000 winners called GYANPANDITS were given special gift hampers and every participant of the contest received a certificate of participation from Sandesh.

About 1500 schools across Gujarat had promoted the ‘Gyan Guru’ contest amongst their students. For the tutors of the top 13 award winners, Sandesh gave away token of appreciation in the form of DVD players.

Commenting on the campaign, Mr Sameer Shah, Director – Operations, Sandesh said “As a newspaper we constantly remind ourselves of the responsibility we shoulder and the power we possess in making an impact on our readers’ mind. The younger our reader the more impressionable his/her mind is. With so many mediums – television, internet, films, video games etc competing against each other in drawing the attention of the school kids, we thought we had to come up with something that children found interesting, something that added to their knowledge bank and for which they would read our newspaper each day. We had expected the campaign to be popular but hadn’t really thought we would cross the mark of 50,000! It is simply amazing. This has encouraged us to plan many more interesting campaigns for the future.”

###
Contact
The Sandesh Ltd.
Isha Agrawal
+917940004110
www.sandesh.com
+919879207559
ContactContact
Categories