Astronomy outreach used for social good

Teach tolerance. Inspire awe. Instill self-confidence. These are among the goals of Universe Awareness (UNAWE), an international outreach program that targets disadvantaged children. Pilot projects are getting started in several countries, and UNAWE organizers aim to have robust programs in place in several developing countries and in the ghettos of a handful of European countries by 2009, as part of the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU’s) International Year of Astronomy.

UNAWE was the brainchild of George Miley, an astronomer at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “The idea is to use inspirational parts of astronomy to broaden young kids’ minds. If kids see from age four onwards that the universe is very big and very beautiful, it will help them grow up to be more tolerant individuals and to realize that there is something beyond their own village or their own district in the city,” says Miley. “We are not trying to educate and produce new young scientists. We are trying to use astronomy for social purposes, to make more rounded human beings.

“It’s extremely important to get in young, because kids are very curious,” continues Miley. “It’s not a coincidence that religions seem to want to get kids right from the beginning. We have talked with quite a few child development experts, and they support this notion.”

Miley started UNAWE after being awarded a Royal Academy Professorship. “I’d been mulling something like this over in my mind for a long time, so when I got this freedom and funding, I decided to stick my neck out,” he says. “I contacted ESO [European Southern Observatory], and they were enthusiastic. Now the IAU has taken this on as a flagship program.”

Bottom-up approach

UNAWE will serve as an umbrella for participating outreach programs around the world. “The idea is to use synergies and piggyback on existing structures,” says project coordinator Carolina Ödman of Leiden University. The project’s three components are development and production of high-tech materials—films, toys, cartoons, and the like—that could be translated according to language and cultural needs; training and workshops; and the facilitation of international networking. UNAWE doesn’t fund the outreach programs. So, says Ödman, “there must be enthusiasm and commitment, and propitious conditions—like possibilities for local funding.” And, she adds, UNAWE takes different forms from country to country. “Members of each community will know best how things work in their community. It’s a bottom-up approach. Usually they contact us to join.”

In one international UNAWE activity, 10-year-olds in boarding schools in South Africa used Skype—software for making free telephone calls via the internet—to talk to kids in Germany during a total lunar eclipse in March. “They were able to compare what they saw from the northern and southern hemispheres,” says Ödman. “These things are very powerful events for the children. You are suddenly a citizen of the planet.”

And in a pilot program in Tunisia, Tunis Science City is taking the lead. “They took on the philosophy of UNAWE after interacting with us,” says Ödman. “The first thing they did was open the doors of the museum to younger kids. They’ve also developed an astronomy bus that travels to villages across the country.” In Venezuela, another country with a pilot program, the first contact was made through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Ödman says. “UNESCO has a network of schools with children from three years old through primary school. Whole schools have taken part in a theater show with people dressed as celestial objects. In Venezuela there is a tradition of Carnival, and the costumes they made were absolutely beautiful—it’s astronomy and local culture.”

Such mingling of folklore and science is what drew Ram Ramanujam, a logician and longtime outreach organizer with the Tamil Nadu Science Forum in Chennai, India, to UNAWE. “We had been collecting folk songs and folk tales. This element of the UNAWE program struck a chord immediately, because we could combine folk materials and science education.” The TNSF’s UNAWE activities are just getting started. “We already have prepared about 10 songs and skits and a dance, something like a ballet for the children to perform about eclipses,” says Ramanujam. “I think we reach of the order of 1000 villages in Tamil Nadu,” he adds. “One thing about villages is that the sky is always there—as opposed to in the city where you hardly see the sky because of light pollution.”

International networking

“A couple of weeks ago, I joined a workshop in India via video conferencing,” says UNAWE steering committee member Kevin Govender, who as head of public outreach at the Southern African Large Telescope is leading the introduction of UNAWE in South Africa. “It was like hearing someone talk from my own mind, it was so similar. It’s free to share ideas, and it’s like getting a global team to address a global problem. It was amazing to hear about problems shared by both developing and industrialized countries. UNAWE breaks communication barriers.

“I work in the northern cape, which is a very rural part of South Africa,” continues Govender. “There are visible remnants of apartheid. Kids in these environments need inspiration. UNAWE is very much in line with what I came into this job for—to use astronomy to try to inspire people not only to be curious about the universe, but also to give them a perspective that is beyond poverty, beyond the hardships they face, and give them hope.” Until now, he adds, “the bulk of outreach in South Africa has targeted middle- to high-school students and the public. UNAWE is targeting an age range that in general around the world is not focused on.”

Participation in an international organization may make it easier for local outreach programs to raise money. “We have presented to our [national] government departments,” says Govender. “It’s too early to say, but it’s hopeful because of the status of astronomy in South Africa. And any country’s government is more keen to fund something if they know it is being watched by the rest of the world.” How much is needed? “I never give an amount,” Govender says. “The more the better.”