“Green Education” campaign

World Earth Day & World Books Day
(10th -25th April 2013)

The presence of trees on earth is inevitable for sustenance of life. Reckless cutting of trees causes global warming and many other problems. To attract attention to this problem and to educate the children on responsible usage of resources, SETU organized a fortnight long campaign in 15 renowned schools of Jaipur, on the occasions of World Earth Day (April 22nd) and World Books Day (April 23rd).

Aim of the programme

• Helping underprivileged students by providing them free notebooks.

• Green Initiative, saving of trees for the benefit of the generations to come by responsible use of resources.

• To make new generation more responsible & environment conscious. Also to promote the habit of sharing.

Thus, this green initiative was not only aimed at saving trees but also to support students who are socially or economically deprived. These students have no access to basic healthcare facilities and education and may be laborers, slum dwellers, orphaned or underprivileged.

At the end of every academic session, most students in schools are left with many notebooks in which a lot of pages remain blank even after the term gets over. These notebooks are usually treated as trash or sold to “Raddiwalas”. However these left over blank pages can be reused if refurbished properly. SETU, along with partner schools, motivated the students to follow the principle of 3Rs – ‘Reduce, Reuse & Recycle’ and understand the importance of natural resources. The message was passed on that if the available papers are used ingeniously, lot of trees can be saved from cutting.

The students were asked to deposit their old notebooks (with used as well as blank pages) at their school counters. The left over pages of old notebooks were segregated from 10th to 25th April by the SETU team & re- bonded to form new copies. A total of about 14000 children participated in the campaign!

These new bound notebooks have been distributed free of cost to the needy students at one of SETU’s partner artisan groups at SWRC, Tilonia.

To make the campaign further useful, interactive awareness workshops were also conducted for the students during this tenure. About 800 students participated in these. Students were made aware of various ways by which they can adopt a greener lifestyle and become responsible.

Certificates were distributed to the participant schools & students as appreciation for this noble contribution.