Understanding the impact of an awareness campaign on indoor air pollution targeted towards school children (7th to 9th) in the city of Pune

Indoor air pollution is responsible for 3.8 million deaths globally. According to the latest Global Burden of Disease data, in 2017, 12.4 lakh deaths in India were attributed to air pollution of which a third were due to indoor air pollution and half were in people under the age of 70 years. Children are very receptive to information received at school. They also tend to implement their new found knowledge at home. Hence, this project is being undertaken in schools.

About 24 schools in Pune have taken part in a previous study similar to this, and by using random sampling techniques, your school has been selected. This study will be done across 25 schools in Pune. We wish to involve children studying in standards 7, 8 and 9 in this activity.

The activity would be a series of puzzles for the children to solve before and after the intervention of a presentation which would attempt to increase their awareness on indoor air pollution and simple measures to curb it. All the students in your school would eligible to attend the presentation. The students of standard 7, 8 and 9 would have a puzzle paper before and after the presentation. The school would be encouraged to have an intra school competition in the form of plays, debates, paintings, posters or model making with indoor air pollution as its theme. If the school has intra school competitions, the school would be eligible for an interschool event scheduled for 24th Jan 2020. The students would also be given a souvenir booklet which would have a tear-off page. A third puzzle paper would be administered to these students between 27th and 31st Jan 2020. The study team will collect these as well as the tear-off page of the booklet.