Chandigarh
18 April 2017
DIVYA AZAD
Today, recognizing the role of Eco-clubs, annually Department of Environment of Chandigarh Administration along with WIPRO-earthian and Yuvsatta organized a ‘Capacity building programme for Eco-club incharge teachers of Schools’. In which teachers from 35 prominent Schools of the city participated. Santosh Kumar, Director, Department of Environment and Chief Conservator of Forests, Chandigarh Administration was the Chief Guest on the occasion.
Prominent amongst those who addressed these teachers included Kulbhushan Kanwar, Environmentalist, Navtej Singh, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ashish Shah & Abhinav Thakur, Wild Ecologues, Himachal Pradesh and Pramod Sharma, Coordinator, Yuvsatta.
Addressing the participating teachers Santosh Kumar shared that the School’s Eco-club should be seen as the driving force behind all environmental and sustainable activities at the school and they should play the role of preparing next generation of green citizens. So organizing, publicizing, promoting, monitoring all environmental/sustainability events, activities and programmes come in its ambit. And Students can become powerful advocates for the conservation of natural resources, limiting waste, ensuring cleanliness and adopting 3 R’s of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle in their lifestyles.
Ashish Shah also informed the teachers about WIPRO ‘earthian’ programme on planning activities on issues of water and biodiversity. Annually at WIPRO the 10 best such winning submissions from schools across the country are chosen by an eminent jury and receives a cash award of Rs.1,00,000/- from Mr. Azim Premji himself at a gala ceremony organized in Bangalore during the first week of February every year. The award is followed by a Continuous engagement Program with school teachers and students from winning schools to build and increase the space given to sustainability thinking and action in schools.
On the occasion Sister Mary Supreeta, Principal of the School also highlighted about the rooftop harvesting they have started at their School with an aim to encourage children to save and value our resources and preserve the beauty of nature as they have made this as a ‘garden of peace’ from waste items like car tyre’s, glass jars, plastic bottles, drums, cans, paint buckets etc. She also added that by adding green space on the rooftop of School they plan to increase biodiversity and provide habitat for a diversity of insects and birds, besides getting fresh vegetable every day.
An exhibition of ‘Birds of Chandigarh’ by Kulbhushan Kanwar was also organized on the occasion.
