City, Scotland school kids join hands for forest conservation

VADODARA: ‘Forests too have the right to live and flourish’ – this is the message students of a city-based school will propagate through their forest conservation campaign. This eco-friendly drive will be conducted in collaboration with Dumbarton Academy in Dumbarton in Scotland and New Era Senior Secondary School as part of Global Curriculum Project (GCP).The focal theme of the project is sustainable development with particular focus on forestry. As part of this international collaboration students from New Era School have created a profile of the forest cover at Sindhrot capturing interesting details of flora and fauna at that area.
“As part of GCP, we have taken sustainable development as the main theme with special focus on forest conservation. The idea is to imbibe in children the need to maintain the balance in eco-system and that starts from protecting the forest. Students from the eco-club have been working closely with school teachers and their global counterparts to evolve conservation plan,” shared coordinator of New Era Senior Secondary School, Pradnya Gokhale.
A fruitful outcome of this global partnership has come out with a calendar designed and conceptualized by the students under the guidance of art teacher Shanta Samanta to raise awareness. “The calendar has paintings done by our students and prize winning photographs sent by Dumbarton Academy depicting the ecology and wildlife in the forests. The proceeds from sale of calendar have been used to adopt a black buck and lorikeet at Kamatibaug Zoo in the city,” added Gokhale.
Gokhale shared that the idea of coming up calendars has been liked by their global counterparts. “This idea is likely to be replicated by several schools abroad to raise awareness and funds for forest conservation. In the coming months we are going to conduct several talks and events in order to make common public aware about the need to conserve forests,” she said.
Students who have joined for this eco-initiative are enthusiastically working to design innovative events. Devjani Mondal who is part of eco-club said, “I painted image of a jelly with giant panda in it with people devouring the dish. The idea is to show that people should not slaughter animals in the name of enjoying delicacies. Through this project we are getting to do our bit to preserve the forest and animals residing in it. Like us forests to have the right to live.”
“Forest conservation is part of school curriculum. Through this project, we want to show the practical applications of this concept,” added teaching faculty Geeta Iyer.