Sowing the seed of eco awareness

By Nidhi ChandranIndian schools in Qatar have been engaged for the past two years in activities aimed at a sustainable environment. Their simple steps have shown positive results which have encouraged them to move forward. Project 5S (School Students Struggle for Sustainability and to Save Environment), started in 2010 and has achieved tremendous success with the total number of students participating in this project exceeding 25,000 along with the entire student body and faculty of the schools.The programmes are the brainchild of former Indian Ambassador to Qatar Mrs Deepa Gopalan Wadhwa and was executed by a team of highly enthusiastic experts and engineers from Institution of Engineers from India (IEI) Qatar Chapter. It aims to create environment awareness among the students and through grassroots level campaigns among the youth. Speaking about the institution, Debashish Roy, Honorary Chairman of IEI Qatar Chapter said, “Qatar Chapter is one of the most active and resourceful overseas chapters of the institution and is working under the aegis of the Embassy of India as a non-profit body. It is also the only overseas chapter authorised to conduct professional examinations in various engineering disciplines. Project 5S is our effort to reach out to the grassroot level of our society in our battle to save our environment.” Project 5S is a year-long programme divided into three legs. The first and second legs include theoretical introduction on environment for high school children. The third leg concentrates mainly on environmental projects. In order to evoke more interest and participation from students, the entire programme is designed as a competition where schools compete for the prestigious ‘Ambassador’s Rolling Trophy’ and ‘IEI Rolling Trophy’.Each school forms a team of Project 5S particpants which comprises of 5 teachers, 15 boys and 15 girls (equally distributed in class 9, 10 and 11). This team spreads the green message to the entire school through various awareness campaigns such as exhibitions, drawings and paintings, articles in school journals, multimedia presentations and educational lectures. Many students are also actively involved in innovative projects to save water and electricity. Technical presentations from environmental experts, multiple choice exams, quiz contests and debates on environmental topics are carefully designed to groom children and prepare them for environmental projects throughout the year.“Our students are involved in a lot of activities throughout the year to create awareness about our environment amongst student community. They include eco-rally, poster designing, wall magazine, debate on environment related problems such as ozone depletion, global warming and climate change etc. Our Eco-Club also organises exhibitions on the environmental theme twice in a year. Children also make exhibits out of waste products,” said Vidhyasankar, Headmaster (Boys Section) of Ideal Indian School and the founder of Ideal Eco-Club. “The ‘Save Electricity’ and ‘Save Water’ project are the main highlights of the competition where children make practical efforts to reduce the consumption of water and electricity. “[As part of the contest] they would be asked to collect the electricity and water bills of their home of a particular month. They would make sincere efforts to reduce the consumption at home by switching off lights and air-conditioners when not required and by using the water resource judiciously. It has been found that many students were successful in reducing water and electricity consumption at home,” he added.“Many of our senior students also take some demonstration classes for juniors to make them understand the importance of eco-friendly environment,” said Vidhyasankar, adding, “I see tremendous progress after we started the Ideal Eco-Club on June 5 in 2010 coinciding with the World Environment Day. “Initially we had only selected 30 students as members of the club. Now we have about more than 1,000 students as members and each and every student is willing to contribute to one way or other to the club.“Though we have to go a long way, I am sure that the project has helped our students to realise their responsibility to make our world a better place to live. I have witnessed an enormous change in our students’ attitude towards environment through various activities of the Eco-Club. Now in our school, it has become a way of life to be eco-friendly. I am confident that we will continue to strive hard to make our world cleaner and greener,” he said. Last year, Ideal Indian School had won the IEI Rolling Trophy and DPS Modern Indian School (DPS-MIS) bagged the Ambassador’s Rolling Trophy.“Such initiatives are really useful for us as we get to know more about our environment and the importance of conservation. We had contributed used books and participated in an exhibition during Indian Community Fair where we sold each book for QR1. We also had different projects like ‘Save Paper’, ‘Save Energy’, ‘Save Water’ and ‘Save Electricity’. We also made some useful items out of materials we normally used to throw away. At home, my siblings also made some useful items out of unused materials. I think this way we can spread the message of reuse and conservation to others around us which will benefit in saving our natural resources for future, said,” Simran Nadkar a 11th grade student of Ideal Indian School.As a part of ‘Save Paper’ project and stressing on the importance of reuse, last year, seven competing schools together reused 8,000kg of school textbooks within their schools. In Leg 3 of Project 5S 2012, Birla Public School, Doha Modern Indian School, DPS-MIS, Ideal Indian School, MES Indian School and Shantiniketan Indian School participated at the Indian Community Fair organised by the Indian Cultural Centre recently. This year more than 10,000 used books were sold at a nominal price of QR1 per book at the fair. This is considered as an approximate saving of about 120 matured trees apart from other environmental and social benefits. Schools also showcased their year-long environmental activities through documentaries, presentations, photographs, paintings, art and crafts and project work at the event to create awareness among the visitors at the fair. “These two years programmes have achieved a great success both in terms of intangible and tangible benefits. Nearly 25,000 young minds were enlightened. About 16 tonnes of books were reused. Almost 11,000 visitors who came to see the two-day Indian Community Fair visited the stalls set up by the schools. They were educated about the serious concern of environmental damage and the urgent needs of remedial measures,” said engineer Seenu Pillai, designer of the Project 5S and the overall supervisor.“The Project 5S was conceived to save our environment. It was felt that if the seed of enlightenment is sowed at the early stage of life to a young mind it will grow and its glow will enlighten others around. The result is tremendous. We hope that these 25,000 young minds enlightened in one year will not only implement their learning in to practice all throughout their life but will also enlighten others around them and thus will lead from the front to make this world a better world,” said Animesh Sarkar, the Founder Secretary and Past Chairman of IEI Qatar Chapter and an IEI Ratna award winner.When asked about any plan to involve Qatari schools in future, Seenu Pillai said, “Project 5S is still evolving and we are fine tuning it to make it more simple, interesting and effective. Once the programme gets well established, we are planning to take it to the Qatari schools.”In a reply to a question on any idea to expand it outside the schools he added, “As of now we have restricted the programme to Indian schools. However, we may take it to a bigger platform in association with some reputable organisations who are committed to save our environment. However, our regular continuous development and educational enhancement programme will go on as usual along with events on various environmental issues regularly for educating the masses in general,” he said.“We may add on or modify our plan based on feedback and achievements. As of now, apart from the grand finale of Project 5S 2011-12 we will be moving on to the next Project 5S. We are looking forward to sustain this initiative and improve it further to scale further heights,” he added.All the students, teachers and people involved in the project are looking forward to this year’s finale and are getting ready to take their efforts further in coming years.