Plant-for-the-Planet Academy Rajasthan (India) 14. August 2012

On Thursday 14th August, the first Plant-for-the-Planet Academy took place at Vivekanand Senior Secondary School in India. Suman Kasana, organizer of the Academy reports: Tuesday the 14th was our first Plant-for-the-Plant Climate Academy in India. Of the probable list of students at Vivekananda Public School, Rajota, Khetri, Rajasthan, we had about 371 students whose participation was confirmed for the presentation by the school authorities. Alhough we know that we only target the audience in the age group of 8-15 years, because it was our first Academy and the school was keen on us addressing all the 371 students irrespective of their age, we did the presentation for all the 371 students. The presentation was done in two groups (because of the small space which couldn’t accommodate such a large audience at once) followed by a tree plantation in the school premises (15 planted) and the remaining in the hills right opposite to the school. Other good news is that the school has agreed to start a Climate Club in their school and has promised to carry out more tree plantation drives and academies to empower other students in the area, yes we have our 1st Climate Club and 371 Climate ambassadors in India. After I finished talking and asked the question “so would you be willing to start a Club?”, all the teachers along with the principal said yes not only to starting a club, but all of them (the teachers) are also willing to volunteer for all the activities and to carry out more tree plantation drives and empower other students and people in the area along with the 371 students from their school. They have already formed a core committee of 6 students for the Club who are aware of the issues related to climate crisis and global justice, and who also excel in academies. Our event was covered (pre and post academy) by the local media with four journalists from different papers attending the academy and listening to us. I would like to thank the members of the media who covered the event, which got us responses from several other schools who are willing to help us organize academies in their schools, so hopefully we will have the next presentation soon. Thanks also to Mr Ashok (Principal), Vice Principal, teachers and staff of Vivekananda Public School, who worked hard and extended their kind cooperation and support in every other possible way in such a short period of time to help us smoothly organize the academy, and the students for being so enthusiastic and patiently listening to us. Some of them had brilliant answers and ideas to a lot of questions/issues raised by me during the presentation. Please take a look at the other pictures here:

Source: http://content.globalmarshallplan.org/ShowNews.asp?ID=4017