Christmas Day in 2008 falls on which day of the week? Is there a chance of a long weekend? Most of us would dash to the nearest organiser - planner, calendar, mobile phone or whatever. But 5-year-old Abhishek has the weekdays of the calendar year 2007 and 2008 stored in his memory. He would simply rattle off the name of the day!
Abhishek has been growing up like any normal kid. But he surprised his parents by recounting days and events and numbers with exact precision. Barely out of kindergarten, he knows the multiplication tables from 2 to 10. He can uncover jumbled up English words in a jiffy. He can read out all the text in the newspaper. He is able to break each word into syllables and pronounce them. He is also able to add up and subtract complex numbers. Though he is not familiar with the Tamil script, he is able to write the letters out.
Perhaps his brain perceives the letters as an objective and he copies out the shapes; but at this speed? He has managed to pick up these skills all by himself.
His parents feel he could be a child prodigy. Sure he is. Abhishek is the son of W V Narayanan, ProCitius Research, Sanmar Speciality Chemicals.
Shruti Neelakantan was among the 28 international young climate champions selected by the British Council, Canada for participating in an expedition to the Canadian Arctic . The British Council, Canada invited the Indian national climate hampions to make a video presentation to select the Indian representative for the Canadian expedition. The presentation by Shruti titled "Green Earth". was selected along with another student's presentation from Jaipur from
amongst the world climate champions
The expedition to the Canadian Arctic will include 28 young people from Canada,the UK,Brazil, Mexico, Germany,India and Ireland who will be joined by artists,scientists and educators from Canada, the US and the UK The voyage across the seas from Iceland, round Greenland to the town of Iqaluit on Baffin Island will equip these voyagers to be Climate Change Ambassadors both at home and abroad.
This year's voyage on the Russian research vessel the Shokalskiy breaks new ground by bringing together young people from seven different countries. The project is designed to engage a whole generation of young people around the world and Shruti is part of this elite team.
The Indian Climate Champions programme is part of the British Council's Low Carbon Futures project aimed at achieving a range of medium and long term climate change objectives in India. TheBritishCouncil,Indialaunched the Indian Climate Change Champions 2008 competition in January this year.Shruti was among the 20 who qualified as 'ambassadors of climate change' at the national level. Shruti and Archana, who are among the 20 national climate change champions are from Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School, Adyar, Chennai. The program aims to give young people across the world a voice to improve understanding and inspire positive action about climate change. Shruti, Archana and Jaswanth as climate change ambassadors use blogs, wikis and facebook groups to get their green message across to people
and spread awareness.
According to Shruti,the biggest problem is applying climate change too ur daily live sand understanding the effects of climate change at a personal level. Shruti is the daughter of K V Neelakantan, of The Sanmar Group.