07 Apr 2011|Noida | Amity International School, Mayur Vihar
Amity Humanity Foundation (AHF) organizes a National Environment Awareness Campaign at Amity International School, Mayur Vihar
Amity Humanity Foundation (AHF) organized an Awareness Programme on “Biodiversity Conservation” at AIS, Mayur Vihar School on 7 April 2011. It was part of National Environment Awareness Programme (NEAC 2010-2011) of Ministry of Environment and Forest, Govt. of India, for which AHF was selected for the 4th time. Along with the students of Classes VI, VII and VIII, a few students from class X also participated in it. The inaugural session began with the
Principal of the school, Mrs. Sarita Agarwal welcoming the guests and explaining briefly to the students what biodiversity means. The traditional lamp was lit by the guests and resource persons amidst chanting of gayatri mantra by students. They also sang a thoughtful song, “Mother nature needs us NOW’. It was followed by a multi-media presentation made by Dhriti Sharma and Somya of Class X”. The detailed presentation covered definition of biodiversity, its origin and evolution over 3.5 billion years, dependence of human life on it and the contemporary problems related to it. Hotspots of biodiversity, habitat destruction/degradation and conservation of Biodiversity were also part of the presentation.
The resource person Dr. Arti Chandra , Senior Faculty, Amity Institutue of Organic Agriculture spoke of the importance to understand biodiversity in order Conserve it. India being one of the 12 Mega diverse countries and one of the signatories to the CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY (CBD) is committed to the CBD objectives ie conservation, sustainable utilization and benefit sharing arising out of access to bio-resources. Emphasising a prudent use of resources, she said “we have to use it up to a certain limit but not to the limit of its extinction’.
During the interactive session students raised many questions particularly about the types of efforts being made by different private and public agencies, environment friendly steps that can be taken by children, hotspots of biodiversity, steps to protect the endangered species etc.
Maj.Gen. (Dr). Surendar Kumar, Vice President, AHF spoke of the different ways in which the people are looking at the problem and highlighted the need to act now or be prepared to pay a higher price. Looking for some of the sustainable ways of living, he quoted the example of the Bisnoi Community, well known for its environment friendly practices.
Later Class VI students took part in painting, and class VII students in slogan writing competition. Class VIII students visited the Organic Farm where Dr. Naleeni Ramawat and Mr. Sanjay Sharma demonstrated different varieties of crops, herbs, trees and vermin-compost.
In the valedictory session, Raghav Paul and Yaashika Mahajan presented a report on their visit to Organic Farm. Later Dr. Akhouri and Dr. Arti Chandra presented the Certificates and prizes to the winners of Slogan Writing & Poster Making competitions. The First Prize for Poster Making went to Hritik Jain whereas Agrima Aron and Neha Haldia got the Second and Third Prize respectively. In the Slogan Writing Competition,
Vernika Agrawal received the First prize, Ketaki Mathur the Second and Shefali Riyal got the Third Prize. A consolation prize was given to Anjali Ramesh. Dr. Akhouri thanked the AIS School Principal, teachers, staff and students for their association with AHF in this NEAC for the last 3 consecutive years. She applauded the efforts put in by the students of class X for the multi-media presentation. She also invited them to ponder upon our own desirable actions at the individual, local and global level and start taking small but thoughtful ways of conserving biodiversity.