Environmental School Warden Project to keep Mysuru Green and Clean Mysore Grahakara Parishat
Environmental Student Wardens from schools/colleges to keep Mysuru Green and Clean. During the last environmental day, MGP had suggested an unique and innovative project to get the involvement of school and college students in keeping Mysuru green and clean. After listening to our suggestion, Abhiram Sankar, the deputy commissioner suggested that we demonstrate our idea in some schools. Thanks to his encouragement, we finally started to experiment in five schools to give concrete shape to the abstract idea. MGP team consisting of S. Shobana, Venkatesh Kharidi, Srikant Urs and Bhamy Shenoy visited five schools during three days as described below. 1. Kautilya Vidyalaya Nov 27, 2018 MCC Engineer Sreekant participated. No Corporator came despite our trying. 2. Mahajana Public School Nov 28, 2018 . MCC engineer Madhukar participated along with the local corporator Bhagya C Mahadesh who was present for some time. She was not aware of the kind of interaction we had planned. She might have thought she was invited as a chief guest. Unfortunately we had to interrupt her when she started to give the usual speech about her efforts to clean her ward. 3. Shanthala School in Siddharth Nagar. Nov 28, 2018. MCC Engineer Poornima participated along with the local corporator. The corporator was courteous and helpful. After the meeting, she offered her full cooperation. 4. Mysore West Lions Sevaniketan School in Gokulum. Nov 29, 2018. MCC engineer Madhukar participated. Despite our requests, local corporator Manju did not participate. (we could not take a group photo at this school) 5. Vijaya Vittala School in Sarswatipuram. Nov 29, 2018. MCC Engineer Madhukar participated along with the local corporator Vedavathi. Corporator was extremely courteous and offered all help. There was no pretension of attempting to show that she
knows what to do. This was in contrast to J L Puram school where the corporator knew exactly what to do to keep our city clean! Environmental Student wardens at Kautilya We had a great experience Kautilya. We met two outstanding students who had already taken interest in keeping the city clean in their areas. One of them was so concerned when she saw residents throwing garbage all over the street, she started to clean the street herself. Another student Bhumi, was also taking interest in asking residents not to throw garbage on the streets. Once when she saw a dog with some plastic/metallic bottle in the mouth and in terrible pain she called PFA to take care of the dog. She is just 4th standard student. In each school, we never pretended that we knew what to do. In fact we tried to impress upon the students that we have no idea of how to
keep the city green and clean. If we knew we would have done it long time. We told them that we have come to interact with them and not to give speeches on environment or how to plant trees or protecting trees or keeping the city clean etc. We want to learn from them about their thinking. We asked them to do just two things – one while walking along the roads if any one is felling a tree or harming a tree in any way, request them to stop and if they do not comply, then they should warn them courteously that they will complain to the authorities. Second thing they should do is if residents throw garbage on the roads or public places request them not to and if possible tell them about segregating the garbage. If residents persist in throwing garbage, bring to the attention of the authorities. Every school students and teachers took down the phone numbers of the MCC engineer. Our constant mantra was that keeping the city clean is not an easy task. Environmental Student wardens at Mahajana Public School. At each school we had requested the management to select only 15 students who are genuinely and seriously interested in environment
and also just two teachers who are interested in the environmental protection. We requested not to force any one to get involved. At three schools, we got really outstanding teachers who have already taken up the environmental work. Some of these teachers had already taken up the task of cleaning their surroundings by taking some personal risk. Every school had taken some project or the other to get school students to keep the school premises and surroundings clean. However all of them felt that what they have done is not enough and MGP’s initiative if implemented in true spirit can work wonders. Environmental Student wardens at Shanthala School. We asked the students why we should get involved in the campaign? After all their parents pay taxes to keep the city clean and it is the
responsibility of MCC to keep the city clean. It was interesting to listen to different responses. One was that it is not possible for MCC to keep clean however hard they try if the residents keep throwing garbage. Since the future belongs to them, it is the responsibility of the youth to get involved. Since they are young they may have better ideas or they may come up with unique and innovative ideas. Often we heard the same comment that if we create more awareness garbage problem can be solved. When they were questioned about what more can be done to create awareness while PM Modi himself has been promoting swachhata Bharat? They realized that mere creating awareness is not a solution. Another often mentioned strategy was to impose huge fines as in Singapore. Environmental Student Wardens at Vijay Vittala School
We did not expect that we will get any new bright idea as a result of our brief interactions of 45 minutes or less. However we succeeded in communicating the message that students themselves have to figure out the way ( see two illustrative garbage problems at the end of this article). We gave a famous example of one Dutch boy, Boyan Slat. At the tender age of 16, he was puzzled why mankind is not doing any thing to clean the oceans of plastic. He was swimming in Greece where he found more plastic than fish which shocked him. He was so concerned he gave up his studies of aeronautical engineering later and founded a company to promote the technical solution he had developed to remove plastic. Today his company Ocean Cleanup has 70 employees and revenues of $30 millions. After narrating this story, question was put to the students how many of them were concerned enough to act when they saw garbage around Mysuru. There were very few hands raised. Even of those who raised hands when another question was put on how many of them did take action there were some in Kautilya and another one in Mahajana. Here is a lesson for all of us. We hold essay competitions, painting competitions, debates, teach lessons on need to protect environment, one day clean up jata, etc. What has this done? Why? We did find that there is a lot more awareness in student in every school about the menace of plastic and their responsibility to minimize its use. We were pleased to learn about that. We should be able to make use of it in our campaign. What Next? We plan to have a formal launch by DC after Dec 10th. We plan to call administrators of five schools along with their headmasters and also two outstanding students from Kautilya as student ambassadors. After the launch of the program, we expect each school to send a report to MGP/MCC on the activity of their student wardens and also any new strategy they might have developed to green and clean the
city. They should also report, if they have been able to attract any nearby schools to join this campaign and how the campaign is spreading in their own school. In some some schools they are planning to have WhatsApp group. It was interesting to learn that when many students at Kautilya have seen TED talk, only few are familiar at Mahajana and none at other three schools. We were delighted when the headmaster of Lions Sevaniketan, Sri Sivakumar inquired if he can convince other schools to join this campaign. MGP is hoping other schools also take up such challenges. It is also our hope that at each school, 15 students have already started to monitor their neighborhood as they promised us after our interaction. They can also motivate other students to get involved in this campaign. In addition, if some progressive corporators can recruit schools in their wards, Environmental School Warden Program (ESWP) can spread throughout the city in less than a year. Potentially we can have more than 10000 school and college students participating in this ESWP to keep Mysuru green and clean. Through this program, students have practical lessons about citizen social responsibility. They also have an opportunity to show their creative talents to solve society’s one of the critical challenges keeping the city clean. As we mentioned during our school visits, teacher mentors have a huge responsibility of keeping the motivation of students high. Since they are self motivated, this should not be difficult. It is not often we come across really motivated government staff who are keen in going beyond the call of duty to contribute their talents and energy. We did meet three such young engineers during the program. We are optimistic that other engineers whom we did not meet are equally motivated to keep the city clean. With active support of the DC, MCC Commissioner, and MCC staff, student wardens can usher in a new era of keeping the city clean and green. Let us not assume that keeping the city is an easy task. Let us also not assume that some of us know how to achieve this herculean task and keep all our options open.