The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and Tata Steel Foundation (TSF) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on implementing the latest stage of The Green School Project which aims to create awareness about environment conservation in the school network.
TERI and TSF will collaborate on The Green School Project – Phase V which aims to educate and empower young minds in the age group of 12-14 years on water, energy, forest and biodiversity, and waste management (interlinking with climate change) to undertake awareness and action projects at school and community levels to develop solutions enabling the creation of a sustainable environment. The Green School Project was launched in 2017 by TSF and TERI to work towards creating awareness about environment conservation in schools through curriculum linkages, action projects, and capacity-building activities.
Signing the MoU, Dr Vibha Dhawan, director general, TERI, highlighted the importance of models such as The Green School project in creating awareness of sustainability at the grassroots. “The project has been a pioneer in generating ecological education at the local community level,†Dr Dhawan added. She also said the Green School project is in perfect alignment with the new PM SHRI scheme 2022 which has been approved in the Union Cabinet recently.
Chanakya Chaudhary, director, Tata Steel Foundation, said: This is one of our flagship collaborations where the project works on an issue which has never been more relevant than today, and continues being as inclusive. It will be vital towards the course of this project to revisit our plans and ensure we stay aligned to our goals. We are enroute to making change agents among children in our communities and this is a change for the better that this project is attempting to bring about.
Sourav Roy, chief executive officer, Tata Steel Foundation: As a ground-breaking collaboration for students, we are looking at three broad directions to ensure that this emerges as one-of-its-kind programmes in the years to come: an organic expansion of the project to reach more schools in some of the most remotest and vulnerable parts of the country in terms of vulnerability, try and establish this as a model with TERI which can be replicated and look at this opportunity to create a knowledge platform which addresses pedagogical gap in education.
As part of the Phase V of The Green School Project, a distinct pedagogy will be designed, tested and replicated through project interventions for different categories of schools. In this phase, students will also be motivated to volunteer for students’ social responsibility by promoting their engagement with schools in the neighbourhood and beyond.
