Awards given to 20 schools in India for best environmental practices
|
New Delhi: Located in a small hamlet in Boormajra in Punjab’s Ropar district, a government school was adjudged as India’s greenest school second time in a row. The second and third prizes went to Government Secondary School, Daramdin, Sikkim and Apeejay School, Pitampura, New Delhi respectively.
At a ceremony here in New Delhi on December 17, Prof Krishna
Gobar Times Green School Programme (GSP) was started last year by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a non-profit organisation. Explaining the reason behind starting the programme, Sunita Narain, director, CSE said: “We started this programme because we very strongly believed that the environmental issue was going to be absolutely critical in India and that this issue would determine the future of our country.”
Prof Krishna Kumar appreciated the efforts of the CSE in launching this kind of a programme, which, according to him, was now transforming itself into a movement. “It has an enormous potential to create hope and combat cynicism which you find very widespread today given the fact that there is so big a crisis facing us,” he said. “The kind of enthusiasm that I see around me is symbolic of much larger energy, which this programme has triggered,” he added. GSP coordinator Sumita Dasgupta pointed out towards the remarkable achievement of the programme in such a short span of time. She informed that from 1,200 schools last year, the number of schools covered under the programme had gone up to 3,500 this year. Not only that, the training of teachers went up from 300 to 600 and the urban-rural ratio tripled during this period. Increasing participation of government-run schools in both rural and urban areas suggested that environment as an issue of concern was coming out of the fold of elitism, she added. Applauding the performance of the Boormajra school, the
|
Printable version
Back to top
