Niti Aayog's Atal Tinkering Labs mission to shape ideas of young minds

NEW DELHI: Niti Aayog will organise a two-day event next month for schools that have been selected to set up Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs) aimed at inculcating a culture of scientific innovation into the young minds.

The event will be held on February 20-21.

Under the programme, Niti Aayog has targeted to set up a total of 500 such labs across the country in select schools.

These laboratories will provide a work space to the young students for shaping their ideas by hands on doing themselves models and learning innovation skills.

For the longer term, ATL mission envisages to cultivate as many as one million school children to become neoteric innovators.

The students participating in the ATLs will be encouraged, guided, mentored and enthused to work with ' Do-It-Yourselves' (DIY) kits so that they develop a spirit of innovation and thereby build solutions.

The young children will get a chance to work with tools to understand the concepts of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

Government will provide grant-in-aid of one time set-up cost of Rs 10 lakh to the selected schools. Also, they will get operational expenses of Rs 10 lakh each for five years.