YOUNG INNOVATORS OF MALAYSIA

TWO students of SMK Raja Mahadi, a government school of Malaysia continued their streak of excellence with 13 golds and 4 special awards for their innovation Low cost Composter & Enricher.

Sharvin Vasantha Kumar (13) and Naavieena Rajaratnam (13) invented a low-cost composter and enricher, which fastens the process of compost with a very simple method. The champs started the research in the year of 2017 when they realized that tons of food being wasted every year. Even though there are many types of compost soil from the waste food around the market, but still not many of us are contributing towards it. An estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted globally each year, one-third of all food produced for human consumption, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of United Nations. We are over 7 billion people on this planet, of which 925 million are starving. Yet we annually lose and waste 1,3 billion tons of food – or enough to feed 3 billion people. As we know the process of making the typical compost will take more than 30 – 90 days the lowest. But our inventors Sharvin Vasantha Kumar (13) and Naavieena Rajaratnam (13) have proof to the world that short term compost also can make wonders. Their successful research takes only 2-3 weeks for the whole process which is very much faster than the conservative method.

Their invention awarded many gold medals and special awards in prestigious exhibitions around the world. They started the experiments with a ceramic pot and later convert it to a small blender from recycling materials that can be connected to solar power. An upgraded version of the invention also won another five gold medals globally. The journal of their project was also published as a book under NOVA SCIENCE PUBLISHERS New York US last year.

According to our little innovators, innovation is a part of their life journey now. It boosts them up to explore, research and use all the tools to uncover something new. Their way of thinking to solve problems has tremendously changed. This has developed their creativity, problem-solving, presentation skills, and many more.

Due to the pandemic and school closures, it has been difficult for schools across the country to keep up with their academic classes, in addition to not being able to carry out any co-curricular or extra-curricular activities. But nothing stopped our young innovators. Sharvin (13) and Naaviena (13) use it as an opportunity to develop them during this pandemic. The two young innovators also are working on their next project which is related to IoT.