Effort to reduce Carbon Footprint

Our story of Change fromSatya Bharti School, Village : Bithala,District Jhajjar,State : Haryana

Bharti Foundation

The change we plan to bring about in the community:

Outlining the disadvantages of using the automobiles every where, less usage of public transport, Increased Deforestation, less use of alternative sources of energy

• Bharti Foundation

– Bharti Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Bharti Group Companies.

– The Foundation aims to help underprivileged children and young people of our country realize their potential.

• Satya Bharti School Program

– The Satya Bharti School Program is the flagship program of Bharti Foundation.

– It aims to deliver free quality education to underprivileged children, with special focus on the girl child across rural India.

– The program goal is to establish 500 Primary and 50 Senior Schools reaching out to over 200,000 students

– The promise of this large scale program, through its operation, is to create a replicable, scalable and holistic model of quality education in rural India

– Present Operational Status:

• Number of Schools Operational: 253

• States of Operation: Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh & Tamil Nadu

• Number of Students Enrolled: Over 35,000

Introduction

About the Community

• Geographical Location:– Situated at 20 Km from Jhajjar City.– Sandy & gravel soil.– Under ground water level : 300ft

• Cultural Background: Major casts are : Jaat, Yadav, Harijan, Brahmin, Mahajan etc. Dominating castes : Jaat Main source of earning is agriculture, animal husbandry and labouring.

A glimpse of India

• Occupies 2.4% (3.28 million sq. km of the worlds land area but support 16.2% (more than 1 billion) of the worlds human population

• Diverse physiographic features - Himalayas, Coastal areas, northern plains, peninsular plateau and islands

• Dominating feature of climate is the Monsoon

• Endowed with varied climate, biodiversity and ecological regions (Forest Cover about 675.5 thousand sq km

• 2/3 rd population dependent on climate sensitive sectors

• Poverty ratio at national poverty line - 28.6 % of total population

• Agricultural land - approx 60% of total land area

• CO2 emissions - 1. 2 tonne per capita

• In this village people has a strong desire for big Cars. Most of the village people are of the view point that the bigger the size of car ,bigger will be their respect in the village. The desire for Car, expensive wood work in home’s and furniture is so high in the village community that they can go to any extent to get all these things.

We ‘Felt’:

This is evidently in contradiction to what we are taught in the school. Due to powerful influence of these luxurious goods, the efforts by the govt. have been futile. In spite of decent public transport facility in the area, people are using private vehicles which is increasing the amount of carbon in local environment. Lot of trees on the road side are being cut to widen the road size and there are many small scale factories which emits lot of smoke.

• People should be made aware of the drawback of excess carbon in the environment, effect of pollution on Agriculture

• More and more people should understand the fact that for most of the routine health related issues pollution and bad air is the major cause, which can be controlled easily at village level.

• The people should be sensitized towards the benefit of Forestation, use of public transport and bicycles inside the village and do not lose on their hard earned money and precious health.

We ‘Imagined’:

• We organized an awareness rally in the village and held a procession at the local SME’s to use latest machineries and discard old pollution creating machines.

We ‘Did’:

•We organized ward wise meetings with the families, street play telling the benefit of using alternative source of energy and planting trees

• The corner play made the people think ‘ pani mein aag aise lagati hai ! Yeh toh koi bhi kar sakta hai.’

• The community realized that till now they had been spoiling themselves by cutting trees.

• The rally was very successful as a result more than 1000 saplings were planted in the village as a part of Change campaign.

Impact on Community:

The people came forward by themselves and showed their keen interest in filling the oath forms, to safeguard the environment and reduce carbon.

• After the successful rally, we have to ensure that the people give up the practice of using private vehicle, purchase products which can be recycled, plant and take care of more number of trees.

• We plan to analyze the data of forest department to find out the number of trees planted in the area.

• We are planning to conduct some more role plays to motivate factory owners to take care of environment while production and dumping the waste.

The Road Ahead…..(in the next 3 months)

Students Participating in the Contest:Name of Mentor Teacher: Dinesh Kumar

School No. Of students participating Name of students Class

SHIWANI VI

REENA VI

RAHUL VI

SUSHMITA VI

PANKIT VIDINESH VIBHARTI VIBHAWNA VINITIN VIYOGITA VI

VIAKSHAY VIAshish VI

ARJUN VI

HIMANSHU VI

MUKESH VI

PRADEEP VI

RAHUL VIPOOJA VI

DINESH VI

ARUN VI

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