India: Mumbai
The Tekla festival’s third international outing was to Mumbai in India. Here, the event again spanned two days, 4 – 5 December 2019.
On 4-5 December 2019, Tekla workshops and Tekla Dialogue were held in Mumbai, India in connection with a state visit by HM King Carl XVI Gustaf and HM Queen Silvia, who also visited the Tekla workshop and Tekla Dialogue. The purpose of the state visit was to further strengthen the good relations between Sweden and India. One feature of these relations is agreements in areas such as technical and scientific collaborations.
The local organiser was the Swedish embassy in Delhi and the local partner was NITI , the National Institution for Transforming India. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, the Swedish Institute and Business Sweden jointly arranged Tekla Dialogue. The participants included representatives from Swedish and Indian technology companies, teachers, researchers, students, decision-makers and journalists.
Tekla Workshop
Once again, the workshop was run by Caroline Dahl, Technology Innovator at RISE in Stockholm. The primary target group was girls aged 11 – 15 from “non-privileged areas”. An important part of this project was that some of the girls’ teachers participated in the workshop. This was so they could learn about Tekla’s methodology and the pedagogics of: working with girls; inspiring them; and, creating a safe environment where they can explore technology. Thus enabled, the teachers can spread this knowledge throughout their organisations and work more actively with getting a greater number of girls interested in and eager to try technology.
Tekla Dialogue
The debate was moderated by Rupali Mehra, TV presenter and founder of Content People AB. Panel members included: Priyanka Anand, vice president and head of HR for Ericsson’s south east Asia, Oceania and India market area; Srimathy Kesan, founder and CEO of Space Kidz India (SKI), a research and technology incubator (Srimathy also gave an inspirational talk to the participating girls the day before the debate); Caroline Dahl of the Tekla team; Anna Roy, senior adviser at NITI Aayog; and, PM Gururajan, professor of materials science at IIT. The discussion threw light on the challenges and the still prevailing imbalance in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) sectors. However, it also highlighted many positive development initiatives.
