News
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COVID and KIDS: A Video Animation from Malawi
UNICEF with support from UKAid is influencing children in Malawi to practice 5 key actions to prevent COVID-19: frequent handwashing with soap, physical distancing, use of the flexed elbow when coughing and sneezing, avoiding touching the face (mouth, nose and eyes) and staying at home.Watch and enjoy on YouTube
More information contact: cmauluka@unicef.org
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Global Hand Hygiene Day 2020
Celebrated every year on 5 May, Hand Hygiene Day aims to mobilize people around the world to increase adherence to hand hygiene in health care facilities, thus protecting health care workers and patients from infections.Particularly relevant this year, the campaign theme “SAVE LIVES: Clean your hands”, is aligned with the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, and aims to recognize nurses and midwives as front-line heroes who deserve acknowledgement and appreciation, and highlight their critical roles in infection prevention.
The main goal of the Global Hand Hygiene Day 2020 campaign is to recognize that handwashing is one of the most effective actions you can take to reduce the spread of pathogens and prevent infections, including the COVID-19 virus. Health workers and community members alike can play a role in preventing infections by practicing regular and frequent handwashing.
As part of the campaign, WHO and partners aim to:
- Make hand hygiene a global priority
- Inspire hand hygiene and behaviour change
- Engage with health care workers in their role in clean care and the prevention of infections.
The campaign also makes a call to action to policy-makers to provide safe work environments for nurses and improve staffing levels.
On 5 May, join in celebrating nurses and midwives around the world.
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“Films for children” Takorama International Film Festival 2020
Organised by the NGO “Films for Children”, Takorama is an international film festival aimed towards teachers, parents and pupils from 3 – 15+ years old around the world. It hopes to create a new link and connection between all.The main objective of the festival is to allow children to discover new films, new stories, new visual universes and to give their opinion. The festival is also an opportunity for all students to continue school activities at home and stay in touch with teachers.
Beyond cinematographic and artistic education, the festival aims to affirm the educational dimension of cinema by positioning it in particular alongside literature and art as a resource capable of accompanying and supporting the set of lessons; it will allow children to view moving images not just as entertainment but as a communication tool.
Sixteen short films have been selected from the catalogue of “Films for Children”. A grid of selection to decide the fit between content and age of the children has been elaborated in collaboration with the organization “3-6-9-12” as well as Serge Tisseron, a senior research fellow at University Paris VII.
During the festival, the children are invited to vote for their favourite film and also to participate in educational activities offered to teachers and parents.
The closure of the first edition of the International Festival Takorama of 2020 depends on the current context of CORVID-19 and the reopening of the schools.
Supported by UNESCO, the French Ministry of Education and a range of NGOs.
Available in 18 languages from www.takorama.org
Arabic, Bengali, Bhasa, Czech, Mandarin Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili and Ukrainian.
Website: www.takorama.org
Twitter: @takoramafes
Facebook: @takoramafestival
Instagram: takoramafestival -
Earth Day 2020 for climate action
April 22nd 2020 will mark the 50 anniversary of the Earth Day and this year the event will be dedicated to the theme of climate action. In 1970, Earth Day launched a modern environmental movement and placed environmental progress amongst the best ways to improve the world.Especially at the time of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, it is important to reflect on the fact that human health and planetary health are inextricably linked. It is therefore crucial to remind ourselves that if we do not demand change to transform our planet and meet our climate crisis “our current state will become the new normal — a world where pandemics and extreme weather events span the globe, leaving already marginalized and vulnerable communities even more at risk”.
Climate change represents indeed the biggest threat to the future of humanity and life-support systems that make the world habitable: “the urgency has never been greater, and the stakes have never been higher – we face mass extinction of species, catastrophic pollution of oceans, destruction of communities and displacement of millions. In short, we are in a climate breakdown”.
Earth Day 2020 will demand that leaders take science seriously, listen to their people and push for action at every level of society to stop climate change. This year, the event is going digital for the first time in its history, with 24 hours of global mobilization, conversations, calls to action, performances, video teach-ins and more. Everyone is encouraged to participate and take meaningful actions to make a difference.
Learn more from earthday.org and look into the Earth Day Live page for virtual activities. Find inspiration, take action and check for events around you by visiting the "Take action" page.
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SAWBO: New animation "Protecting Yourself from Coronavirus" available in 25 languages with more to come.
SAWBO (Scientific Animations Without Borders) has recently released a new animation to address best practices to protect against Coronavirus. The 'Protecting Yourself from Coronavirus' animation is available in 25 languages with more translations to come. You can contribute to the translation of this or any other animations into your local language for greater distribution and reach. View, download and share!
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Health for All Film Festival 2020
WHO received 1265 submissions from 119 countries. Filmmakers had been invited to submit a short film for one of three categories: video reports, animation or nurses and midwives (2020 being the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife). The entries focused on a wide range of topics and aimed to put storytelling power in the hands of film-makers and showcase the role of individuals and communities as champions for health and well-being.WHO staff from all over the world participated in the preselection of a shortlist of about 15 submissions per category out of entries received.
View a YouTube video of WHO's Director-General talking about the film festival, and more information can be found on the WHO website and Facebook.
The shortlisted entries of approximately 15 entries per category are now available on YouTube:
- YouTube playlist on video reports category
- YouTube playlist on video animations category
- YouTube playlist on Nurses and Midwives category
- Twitter Video reports/category 1
- Twitter Animation films/category 2
- Twitter Nurses and Midwives/category 3
In preparation for the award evenings of the Festival (currently scheduled to take place on 16, 21 and 22 May 2020), the film festival jury will nominate a winner in each category. The WHO Director- General will make the final decision on awards, based on the advice of the jury.
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LabXchange: an open free online platform for learning and engaging with science
Educators and students are increasingly using remote learning platforms and tools to study, learn, and engage with scientific topics, especially in the time of COVID-19. The wealth of available options includes LabXchange [https://www.labxchange.org/], the Open edX-based platform created by Harvard University and Amgen Foundation. The platform is an intergenerational network open for learners to enhance their personal education experience, for educators to grow and help others to discover science, and for researchers to share their experience and interact with a wider community.LabXchange library includes science videos, among which the ‘Inner Life of the Cell’ ; short learning experiences called pathway such as ‘Coronavirus: From Bats to Humans to Pandemic’; interactive animations such as ‘Introduction to Gene Editing: CRISPR-Cas9’; virtual simulations like ‘DNA: The Double Helix’ and experiments that allow practice and engagement with lab equipment, techniques, and protocols; case studies, and more. In addition, users can personalise their learning pathways, share them and connect in groups, discuss and receive feedback within the scientific community. The core of content offer is built around biological sciences but, to cite a few, Chemistry, Physics, Scientific Communication and Bioethics as subjects at the intersection between Science and Society, Health Science, and Global Health are also included.
The platform supports the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) #3 - Good Health and Well-Being and #4 - Quality Education and facilitates global collaborations and team-based approaches on the SDGs by providing ways to connect people and build together solutions to global challenges.
Visit LabXchange website and YouTube channel to learn more and explore some of the features of the platform, and connect to LabXchange via Twitter and Facebook.
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Pueblo Science – Increasing Science Literacy
Founded in 2010 by scientists and engineers, Pueblo Science is a registered Canadian charity working to advance science education across the globe. They do this by running a combination of local and international programmes designed to engage children and spark their interest in science through active, hands-on learning, discovery, experimentation, and problem-solving. In low resource communities. Pueblo Science has also developed hands-on teaching kits using inexpensive, locally-available materials and trained teachers through collaborating with local ministries of education to improve science curricula.The main objective of Pueblo Science is to advance science education across the world and create lasting solutions to poverty. Their core team of staff is now supported by over 800 volunteers through their 7 programme countries of Bolivia, Canada, Guyana, India, Jamaica, Thailand and The Philippines.
In Canada, they run community outreach events and youth science camps to foster and develop young people's enthusiasm for science. Internationally, they run multi-day training camps for science teachers in low-resource communities on integrating hands-on experiments into their own classrooms, using locally available and affordable materials. Pueblo Science have been following the findings from the research study The impact of Science Literacy delivery methods - what works? in particular the impact assessment for the science fairs as they have started a new initiative with remote community students and teachers in the Philippines using fairs as a way to bring together people to help them solve local community problems.
The next scheduled event is a Hackathon for Science Education bringing together more than 50 innovative students with scientists, engineers and educators as mentors to create kits that will teach aspects of robotics to high school students in low-resource communities around the world.
View the profile for Pueblo Science giving further information and contact details.
And deliverables from the Impact assessment study, including Working Papers, Bibliographies, RecentReviews, Summarised Results and a Tool Kit.
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Foldit: Solve puzzles for Science: NEW a coronavirus puzzle
Foldit was first released in 2008 and now has over 240,000 registered players. Its developers, Prof. David Baker, a protein research scientist at the University of Washington and Seth Cooper a game designer wanted to attract as many people as possible to the cause of protein folding. So, rather than only building a useful science tool, they used gamification to make Foldit appealing and engaging to the general public.The key objective of Foldit is to fold the structures of selected proteins as perfectly as possible, using tools provided in the game. The highest scoring solutions are analysed by researchers, who determine whether or not there is a native structural configuration that can be applied to relevant proteins in the real world. Scientists can then use these solutions to target and eradicate diseases and create biological innovations.
Foldit has released new puzzles this month including a new coronavirus puzzle to feed into laboratory work in designing proteins that could be used as antiviral agents against the 2019 coronavirus! Check out Puzzle 1805b!
Run by academic research scientists, Foldit is free to play and not-for-profit.
To get started, download Foldit and create a username! You can also follow news from their Blog and see the full range of games.
Read the special update on Coronavirus puzzles.
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Advancing public discussion around science or evidence: the John Maddox Prize 2020
Nominations open today, 9 MarchThe John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science is a global prize: people from any country and in any field can be nominated. It is awarded to an individual for any kind of public activity in any of the areas listed below:
- Addressing misleading information about a scientific issue (including social science and medicine).
- Bringing sound evidence to bear in a public or policy debate.
- Helping people to make sense of a complex scientific issue.
There is one winner, who will receive £3000. An additional award is made to someone who in the opinion of the judges is at an early stage of their career.
In 2019 there were over 200 nominations from 38 countries.
Read about all past winners.
Please also share notice about the prize with your colleagues, friends, and families.
Nominations close at 11:59am (GMT) on 11 May.