Carolyn Stephens

Dr Carolyn Stephens, Senior Lecturer in International Environmental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, will be in Calcutta in January 2008. Carolyn will be preparing a video documentary on Howrah Pilot Project and the Talimi Haq School.

Carolyn is an internationally recognised expert on urban public health policy. In 2007, Carolyn won a prestigious London Education Partnership Award in recognition of her groundbreaking work in engaging young people from deprived communities in East London with science. The awards are designed to honour those educational institutions and partnerships in London that have had the most impact in inspiring London students from disadvantaged backgrounds to believe that they can go to university and to succeed at doing so. At a national level, interest in science among the young is in decline, and trends indicate that disadvantaged young people are particularly affected, with few entering biomedical sciences.

With this in mind, Carolyn ran summer schools and offered work experience to disadvantaged young people in London in collaboration with science and education officers of London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. In 2004 she recruited a cohort of thirty one young people from three state schools in Barking and Dagenham, which is one of the most deprived areas of the capital. The pupils took part in a three-year project, entitled 'It's Our Science, Our Society, Our Health'. The aim was to encourage the young people to undertake their own science and research projects, to offer them support, and to inspire them to want to learn more.

The young people presented their findings at a reception hosted by the Royal Society in May 2007. The project topics they chose to work on had both local and international relevance, and ranged from the life cycle of malaria and other mosquito-related diseases, natural resistance to and protection from malaria, to connecting world-wide youth, the capability of young children's understanding, the history and usefulness of vaccines and triggers for asthma. The project has transformed the attitudes and aspirations of the young people who took part. In Carolyn's words, 'We all feel that higher education should be an option for all young people in London - irrespective of their social background. These young people changed our institution with their energy and enthusiasm, and their ideas on international health and poverty. We hope they go on with this work to transform the world we live in'.

For this work, Carolyn was also awarded the Royal Society Kohn Award for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science, for 2007.

Among the students were Nelson and Iram, who visited Talimi Haq School in January 2007. And after his return, Nelson linked the Talimi Haq School to Shanti International, a UK-based charity. We are currently awaiting govt approval to receive a small grant from Shanti to support Talimi Haq School.

Carolyn had been the Environmental Health Adviser in the Calcutta Environmental Management Strategy and Action Plan (CEMSAP), a project of the Dept of Environment, Govt of West Bengal, supported by the DFID, UK. So she is quite familiar with Calcutta and Howrah. It was from CEMSAP that Howrah Pilot Project was initiated, and Carolyn had played an instrumental role in its establishment in 1997. Over the years, she has made valuable linkages for the resourcing of our grassroots programme in Priya Manna Basti. But she had been unable to be here in person, though her LSHTM and CEMSAP colleague Tony Fletcher had come in early 2000. Now Carolyn will finally be coming - to join in person what she has always been part of in mind and spirit. We are grateful to the Royal Society for enabling Carolyn to come back to Calcutta.