Research Internship for Science and Technology for High School Students

Introduction

      Early exposure to science is an important element of producing world class scientists, engineer, physicians, science teachers, business people, and policy makers. To achieve this goal, Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF) and Pakistan Society of Computational Science/Biology (PSCS/PSCB) launched “Research Internship for Science and Technology (RIST)” project and requesting applications from interested faculty members and high school students. This summer Science Research internship will engage students early in their education where they will learn from their mentors how they perform cutting edge research, what inspires them and how to pursue science at college and University.

Joint Venture

Event

     In this event ACM SEECS chapter helped Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF) and Pakistan Society of Computational Science/Biology (PSCS/PSCB) to convey their message to maximum amount of students and faculty members. ACM setup an event for that on social media and publicized this message to students. We also sent an official mail to different school/colleges, in order to convey our message to everyone. The time duration fro the promotion of this event was (9th-15th April, 2014).

        ACM put in so much effort in this as we truly support the purpose of RIST, i.e. is to promote science at school level and give high school students hands-on research experience by working on research projects with top class research scientists affiliated with public and private Universities in different parts of Pakistan. We hope that this experience will encourage our students for science and have positive impact on student interest in careers in science disciplines.

          This is the very spirit that ACM supports so we did our best effort to promote this event and we will try our best to do things like this in future as well.

Fund Raising Event for Thar Victims by ACM and NCSC in collaboration with Sahara for Life Trust

       Abrar-ul-haq is known mostly as a singer among the people of Pakistan and abroad. Few people knows him as a social worker who runs his own charitable NGO named Sahara for life trust. Sahara trust was started in 2001 and so far it has grown its network all around the country in last one decade. His first project started in 2001 which was a medical hospital he started in the name of his mother “Sughra Shafi Medical Hospital”. It was completed in 2 years’ time providing people of Narowal free medical treatment and free ambulance service which was available 24 hours a day. The equipment used at the hospital is state-of-the-art and the same as the one used abroad. It has a capacity of 250 beds. It provided services such as Emergency unit, Trauma, ENT, Kidney and Gynae Center. Surgery, orthopedic, eye, X-ray departments, State-of-the-art CT scan machine, Neonatal nursery, ICU, CCU, Operation Theater, Ventilators, Defibrillator and Cardiac Monitors. In addition to these it also provides free treatment to deadly diseases such as TB, Psychiatry, Dengue and Cancer.

Sughra Shafi Medical Hospital

    Due to the success of Sahara Trust Abrar-ul-Haq got worldwide recognitions and acknowledgement. He won the following national awards because of his work:

1. Human Rights Excellence Award
2. Presidential Award
3. Sitara-e-eesar
4. Medal of Excellence (Tamga-e-imtiaz)
5. Human Rights Ambassador for OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference)

       Sahara For life Trust is a registered organization in USA, Canada and UK. Sahara Trust has provided medical facilities and aid to the victims of Earthquake in 2005 and 2013, and to the victims of floods in 2010 and 2013. Sahara has also built houses for the victims who were left homeless because of the flood and earthquakes.

Sahara is now working on its latest project of Sahara Medical College which costs around PKR 52 crore. This college will graduate 100 doctors per year to fulfill the need of doctors at Sughra Shafi Medical hospital and in Pakistan in general. The project is now heading to its completion. In parallel to this Sahara for Life Trust is also at Thar to help the victims who are dying of malnutrition.

     ACM-SEECS Chapter and NCSC had an opportunity for working in collaboration with Sahara for Life Trust. ACM-SEECS Chapter Student Council planned, managed and executed the fund raising event for Thar Victims in 1 week time. We raised PKR 100,000 in 3 days’ time. We made some strategy and planning and worked according to it. We decided that we will collect funds from the faculty offices, cafes, from different departments and from hostels. We assigned duties and divided the work. Our décor team designed donation boxes for funds raising. Those boxes helped us a lot as if was an official proof for what we were doing.

Presenting a cheque of Rs. 100,000/-

        After all the planning was completed we started collecting funds on Tuesday 25th March. We started from the Faculty block and managed to collect sufficient amount of funds from them. Then we went to cafes and lobby to collect money from the students. That evening we distributed the boxes to our representatives in the hostels to collect money. Boxes were given to the representatives in different departments and school.

         On the last day of our campaign i.e. 27th of March 2014, Chairman and founder of Sahara for life trust, Mr. Abrar-ul-Haq was invited to give a guest lecture on community service and about his work at Sahara Trust. Biggest Auditorium of NUST, i.e. Auditorium of CIPS with a capacity of 800 persons was booked for this special purpose. Volunteers from NCSC helped us to collect money during the ceremony. At the end of ceremony we handed over to him a cheque of PKR 100,000 which is to be used for Thar Victims to provide them with medication and food for those who are dying of lack of nutrition.

         Overall it was a biggest event ACM SEECS has organized in the last couple of years. We hope that the hard work which the student council has done will help the victims in Thar to bring smiles on their faces and this small amount which the students have donated from their heart will do some wonders at Thar.

ACM-SEECS Student Council with Abrar-ul-Haq

Album can be seen here.

Note: This Post was originally written by General Secretary of the council (Ahmed Ahsan Khan) for his own blog.