Company Announcement - Kids’ Lab aims at fostering learners’ interest in chemistry
This educational outreach project highlights the importance of water resources

BASF, the world’s leading chemical company, will host, for the 5th consecutive year, its highly successful Kids’ Lab workshops at the National Science Festival (SciFest) in Grahamstown from 1-8 March 2016. Since 2011, Kids’ Lab has evolved into an award winning global program, with over 500 000 children having participated in the interactive experiments in around 35 countries so far. In South Africa, the company has reached out to almost 20 000 children.
Launched at BASF’s headquarters in Germany in 1997, BASF Kids’ Lab is an interactive chemistry education initiative that forms part of the company's global Sustainable Development Program.

Following the success of its Kids’ Labs workshops since participating in SciFest - having received awards for “Best Newcomer Exhibition” in 2013 and “Exhibitor of the Year” in 2014 - BASF will once again present young learners with the excitement of hands-on chemistry experiments. 

At Kids’ Lab, children between the ages of 8 and 15 are given the opportunity to explore chemistry by engaging and collaborating while conducting professionally guided experiments. The BASF Kids’ Lab team will once again be working in collaboration with the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre, whose fully trained team members will be assisting in supervising the experiments. 

Kids’ Lab enables young people to gain a better understanding of chemistry, and encourages them to find out more about the world around them. All of this is done in a fun and practical learning environment for both the learners and facilitators. Through participation in a variety of water-themed experiments, learners are given the opportunity to explore the magic of chemistry in the world around them.  

In 2015, BASF’s 150th anniversary year, a new experiment for Kids’ Lab was introduced called “Keep cool!” which will be presented at SciFest Africa 2016 for the first time.  As with the previous water-themed program, the latest offering focuses on a theme of global social relevance:  How can we avoid food losses so that there is enough healthy food for everyone to eat?  Children attending the “Keep cool!” workshop engage with this topic by looking at the question relevant to their age group, for example, “How can we keep drinks cool for longer?. According to Joan-Maria Garcia-Girona, Managing Director of South Holdings Africa and Country Cluster Head for Southern Africa, Kids’ Lab, not only strives to improve science literacy, but it also aims to captivate the inquisitive nature of the young generation.  “From its early beginnings, BASF has always had an innovative and collaborative culture and, to this day, continues to work closely with university researchers, scientists and chemists who have provided the cornerstones for our research,” he said.  “With BASF being a science and research-based company, one of the critical factors for our continued success is supporting the development of the next generations of scientists.  Through initiatives such as Kids’ Lab, BASF continues to foster young people’s interest in natural sciences, especially chemistry, and Scifest Africa is the ideal platform to achieve this goal.”

Key messages of the programme include:

• Chemistry plays a key role in life;
• Chemistry offers interesting and challenging problems;
• “Doing” chemistry is fun;
• Water is a critical and valuable resource; and
• Chemistry facilitates the responsible handling of water.
• At BASF, ‘We create chemistry’ for a sustainable future.

During 2016, SciFest Africa is celebrating its 20th birthday with the theme ‘A matter of time’.  Scifest Africa 2015 offered more than 58,000 visitors from Southern Africa a festival programme consisting of 75 exhibitions and 650 events, presented by 350 contributors from 100 organisations in South Africa and 12 other countries.