Hyderabad : SAEVUS Eco-Achievers Quiz 2018-2019 held  in the city at Hyderabad Public School Begumpet Hyderabad(HPS) on Saturday 24th  November. 87 teams from 39 Schools, 217 schools from the city have participated. These include HPS, Oakridge, Meridian,  CRPF, Defence, Tena School, Suchitra Academy, Kalpa School, Gitanjali etc and others.

This quiz is being organised nationally at 40 cities. This season it is held in 15 cities so far and Hyderabad is the 16th city. Record number of 217 kids participated in the quiz. Hyderabad registered a record number of students.

Preliminary round was a written quiz, where they had to answer 20 questions in ten minutes. Based on the performance, six teams were short listed from 87 teams. The six teams shortlisted for final round include: Sadhu Vasvani; Defence Labs; Little Flower; Meridian; Madina Public and CRPF Public School.

In the final phase there were six rounds which comprised of Audio, Video, Cross Word, Text and others.

Some interest questions asked include: Is Tomato a fruit or vegetable? What is group of Eagles called?Are Bananas Radioactive and is it true that eating too many can kill you?

At the end the team Meridian School with maximum score emerged as city winner. They will represent city in National Finals to be held in February 2019. The first three national final winning teams will get a cash prize of Rs one lakh, fifty and thirty thousand respectively.

The quiz was conducted by Rajiv D Silva, Quiz Master on behalf of  Saevus Magazine Mumbai.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Quiz, Rajiv D’Silva, Quiz Master who by profession an architect and by passion a quiz master observed that sadly Quiz is seen as a School Activity. But it must sustain beyond school.

Raji D’Silva, runas a quizzing outfit called “QuizCo” based out of Goa.  He has been engaged by Saevus Magazine to conduct Quiz across the country.

The quiz is timely. Mother Earth is crying for help. If you don’t go green, you go read is the message we wanted to communicate to young citizens, who are future of our nation, quiz master said.

India is one among the quizzing nations. But that is not sufficient.  It is not as widespread as it is in UK. Though there are many sources of information and information explosion is happening via internet, people are become less and less knowledgable. They are becoming more dependent on Google.

To encourage quizzes, they must change their schedules by avoid to hold them on holidays so that more participate in quizzes, he added.

It is quite disappointing to note that except Kaun Banega Crorepathi, there isn’t any serious quizzing is happening on mass media. It was not the case twenty years ago. In person quizzes are anytime more pleasure to participate than virtual quizzes, the quiz master added.

Uday Pilani, President of Rotary Club of Hyd Deccan;

Rotarian Sunit Jain, Director, New Generations, many members of RCH and their spouses graced the program.

Speaking on the occasion, Uday Pilani said, we will bring back glory to the Quiz. Next year we will organise the quiz with more number of schools in the natural surrounding, under the shade of the tree to make its participants realise the importance of Mother Nature, he added.

The theme of the quiz was “Juxta” whereby the students were questioned about nature and wildlife related topics from all walks of life like literature, science, movies, mythology etc.  The aim of the quiz, according to Raji D Silva, Quiz Master was to develop a strong environmental consciousness among school children.

The quiz was organised by Saevus Magazine, the country’s foremost nature and wildlife magazine in association with the Rotary Club of Hyderabad Deccan, Skybags and Hem Chand Mahindra Foundation.

Teams of three comprising of students from standards 5th, 6th and 7th from schools across Secunderabad and Hyderabad took part in the quiz championing the cause of the natural world!

The quiz was being organized in association with Rotary Clubs in 40 plus cities in the country between August and January. The winners from these city rounds will be pitted against each other in the national finale to be held in Mumbai in February 2019. The winner, first runner-up and second runner-up teams from each of the city rounds will be given trophies, certificates and backpacks from Skybags. Winners in the national finale will be winning cash prizes besides many other goodies.

The Entry to the quiz was free. Each school could send in three teams.  Such team/s  consisted of one student from each standard, 5, 6, 7 respectively.