DISCOVERY OF OUR ROOTS 

To stand tall and spread the branches, a tree needs to deepen its roots. As human beings, we need to know about our roots, about our forefathers’ land and culture so that we can know who we truly are. Our future generation of Odias living and working in Singapore need to know their roots in Odisha and draw strength from the glory of the land and culture. With these thoughts, the OSS committee had organised a program called “Discovery of our Roots” for the OSS Youth members. Those who participated are children of OSS members and all are students studying in Singapore, from age ten till age twenty. The program was held along with the ‘OSS Got Talent’ event on 11th December. It was in a competitive seminar presentation format, where participants had researched and presented about Odisha. Each group of participants had presented a short video on Odisha’s Art and Culture, Cuisine, Festivals, or Climate change. 

The videos were judged by a panel consisting of Mrs Sharda Sahoo, Mrs Gouri Dash and Mr. Bibhuti Mallick. The criteria for judging included how well connected the material was to Odisha, accuracy and completeness of the information, creativity in the presentation, clarity of delivery and coordination among group members. The judges interacted with the participants asking questions about what they learnt from the research for their topic. The participants had expressed satisfaction with the opportunity to learn so much about Odisha from this event.

The presentation on festivals had been made by Puja Priya Mohanty, Stuti Prangnya Mohanty, Khyati Padhy, Vaishnavi Barik and Abhishek Routray. It was presented as a short skit in a travel agency where each department head described the festivals using interesting facts and images. This was liked for the creative idea and was also adjudged as the best presentation. 

The Cuisine of Odisha was presented by Shlok Samsmrut Sahu, Amrit Krishna Sahoo, and Aditya Mishra. The group had started the presentation with Mahaprasad of Lord Jagannath before displaying mouth-watering vegetarian, non-vegetarian dishes, Mitha, Pitha and Street food items. The use of nice pictures and delicious description made the audience salivate. The judges were impressed to learn about our future generation’s liking for Odia food like Pakhala. 

Climate-change in Odisha had been presented by Roman Mohapatra, Kriti Krishna Sahoo, Angel Acharya and Sara Samanwita Sahu. Scripted as a learning journey to Odisha, the presentation was nice with a virtual visit to Konark and Puri beach. The participants highlighted the issue of climate change and how it is affecting coastal state like Odisha with frequent cyclones, hotter summers and flooding. The group took effort to speak in Odia and it was nice to hear some Odia dialect and interesting pronunciation from our future generation in Singapore. Both the presentations on ‘Cuisine of Odisha’ and ‘Climate-change of Odisha’ were joint-winners of the second position.

Suyasha Sahu presented her research about Palm leaf manuscripts of Odisha. She had done very good research on the topic and shared about ancient Odia epi written on Palm leaves. She described the painstaking process used for preparing the palm leaves and preserving them. She had answered the live questions by the judges very confidently and her presentation had been judged to be the third position.

In the end, the judges had spoken encouragingly about the effort made by the youngsters in researching and learning about Odisha and putting creative ideas to prepare the presentations. They felt that the program can be expanded in future, drawing more youth participants giving them opportunity to learn about Odisha using their academic skills. This way, they would develop true understanding and appreciation for Odisha’s land and culture.