Child's and activity corner

 As a colleague said "you can immediately see when the women takes over" after I told her that I am organizing a child corner at our research institute. Well, if you want to have in your team young people, you have to care that there is also a place to stay with kids. I really like flexibility of our work. I like that we can work in the night, that when we have ideas, we can delve into these and when we don't we can do something else. I always say that this is perfect for parental leaves as you can work when the kid sleeps or exchange easily with your partner. Smart women have also one trouble - they often want to do something with their brains and not stay only at home. So giving the option to parents to visit work, exchange kids, work or have a meeting while the kid is playing is win win situation for everyone. And it might be the way to bring even more women to research. By showing them that it is possible, that only the system might need to be a bit adapted.

So there came my idea that we might devote one room at CIIRC to child's corner. The director was fine with the idea, but wanted to find out what all it might be used for so the room doesn't stay empty. So last week I met with him, discussed and afterwards prepared a survey to find out what might be the usage of the place and what other usages the place might have. This was fun. Another creative activity where you burst with ideas and start creating your imagined worlds. I already got great suggestions, such as we could organize there robotic workshops for kids.

 Let's see where this goes and whether we will be successful in the end, manage to have the room and also people to use it :).