Several college from Chennai participated at the debate contest orgainised by U.S.Consulate and Loyola College.The chief guest on the occasion was Mr.Andrew Simkin , the Consul General.

The event commenced with the screening of the videoclipping of the first and second presidential debates between Barrack Obama and John McCain at Mississippi University and Belmont University respectively. The participants, as per the norms of the contest, reproduced them by providing both Democratic and Republican perspectives on critical issue such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Energy, Immigration, Healthcare, etc.

The judges, Mr.Karthik Chidmabaram and Ms.Jodie Enda , A journalist declared the team from Stella Maris College as the winners, closely followed by Loyola College and Ethiraj College. The debate moderators, Ms. Ragini Gupta, admitted,
“The colleges did much better than some colleges in the US.” She handed out the mustpread “post-AmericanWorld” by Fareed Zakaria to all participants.

Concerned at the increase in global warning and the consequent natural disasters the students, of PSBB Senior Secondary School , Formed a team called the ‘Rainbow Warriors’ and formulated several approaches to create awareness on global warming. They made attractive charts with powerful messages on global warming and put them up in more than 30 outlets in their neighbourhood .These charts are replaced every fortnight with other charts with more messages.

The Rainbow Warriors Present a sapling toevery child from 4th to 8th standard in their school on his /her birthday along with instruction o nurturing it.Children take this sapling in a paper bag (recycled paper) which strongly requests students to lessen the use of plastic.They have also gifted tree saplings to the panchayat Union Middle School at sundara Cholavaram.They made a power point presentation on global warming in Tamil to the students of the schoolk and also gave them charts with miessages on reducing global warming, in Tamil.

The students of M.Sc. Eletronic Media, Anna university conducted an anti-tobacco
IEC compaign (Information Eduction Communication ) recently for the students of
wallajabad at the Arignar Anna Girls Higher Secondary School.The campaign was
part of a three day workshop titled ‘capacity Building on Development
Communication for Tobacco Control’conducted by the Department of Media
Sceences,Anna University in collaboration with the Directorate of punlic Health and
preventive Medicine, Government of Tamil Nadu, Chennai, As part of the work
shop, twenty five students were trained in developing street plays and supportinf
IEC materials on tobacco control.

The street plys involved humour and information
in the right quotient.The street plays informed about the government’s ban on
smoking in public areas and the right of every citizen to prevent people from
smoking in public. The plays also made a mockery of sstars to smoke on screen and
informed the students on the impact of smoking on the health of the smokers and
their families and friends.

After the performance, the officials from the health department and the faculty
from the department of Medial Sciences conducted a feedback session with the
scholl children and the response was overwhelming.The students vowed to prevent
the sale of tobacco products in their villages and they promised to take home this
message.

Schookl students have come a long way fromjust merely reproducing science
projects from’easy-to-do scholl projects books, to innovative designs the highlight of
which was robotics (both designing and programming) at the madras christian
college school,chetpet, Others include tropical topics suchas global
warming,”stydents are more aware about the needs of the society and what is
needed to protect our earth’s future and in turn theirs too. It is very exciting to see
them exhibit and explain such innovative and complicatedmodels at theis very
young age,”said Vice-chancellor of Anna University Prof Mannar Jawahar, who
was thechief guest on the occasion.The exhibits ranged from walking robots to
projects against global warming.