Report by Satish Kumar Sundaram 

AID Bangalore conducted Metric Mela, a fun event involving kids, parents and other adults at the Minerva Circle tuition center on July 22, 2007. Preparations for the event had started a month ago where AID volunteers (Balaji, Senthil, Pushpa, Sathish and others) met with the kids a few times to decide on the flow of event and logistics.The event basically consisted of four booths one each demonstrating measurement of weight, length, volume and time. There was also a registration booth where the participant was given a chit with his/her name and a registration number on it. In each booth the participant would be asked to estimate on the unit being measured. The guess was entered in to a book maintained at each booth after which the actual measurement was taken in front of the person who made the guess. The actual measurement was also entered in to the book. The person who made the closest was given a small prize.

Radha and her partner managed the ‘weight’ booth where the participant was asked to make a guess about a random person’s weight. In the ‘Height’ booth Santhosh helped by AID volunteers Pulkit and Sayeed asked the participant to guess a random person’s height. In the ‘volume’ booth Soundarya and her partner engaged the participant in guessing volume of a random amount of water, rice etc. Finally in the ‘time’ booth Prabhakar helped by AID volunteers Balaji and Srini made the participant to guess the amount of time it would take for a given quantity of oil to drop through a small funnel. The fact that there were different kinds of oil (like coconut oil, castor oil) made it difficult for the participants to piggyback on somebody’s answer.

On the event day setting up the booth started around 1:30pm with AID volunteer Sathish and the kids setting up the items and the tables. By 2pm AIDers Balaji and Pulkit went around the community inviting people for the event. At 3pm the event started and continued till 4:30pm. Around 100 people participated enthusiastically exceeding the expectation of at least a few of us. Quite a few people actually guessed the measurement correctly in each of the booth. When the event ended the number of correct guesses at the weight, height and volume booth turned out to 10, 6 and 4 respectively. For the time booth we picked the three best guesses as the absolute time in seconds was too difficult to predict! Winners were picked up through lots and three prizes for each category were given away.
Overall it was a good team effort by the kids and AIDers along with strong participation from the community. Volunteers showed up in good numbers – Balaji, Senthil, Pushpa, Pulkit, Sayeed, Srini, Deepa, Jyotsna, Sathish and others helped make the event a success. Now it gives enthusiasm to conduct the event in other areas!