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Children for CLEAN Environment Maneesha Gopalakrishnan The Annual Meet of the children
associated with the Community Led Environment Action Network (CLEAN) took
place recently at New Delhi. A report on the CLEAN Meet.... T One such movement of children, who have taken up on themselves the unrelentous task of acting as safekeepers of the environment, had its annual meeting on January 29, 1999, in New Delhi. It was a meeting of 300 children from different schools of Delhi, Shillong and Faizabad. The children had come together with a purpose. They were all members of a movement called Community Led Environment Action Network - CLEAN. The occasion was the first annual meet of all CLEAN members. The meet was hosted by Development Alternatives who is also the programme organiser. Initiated in Delhi in 1996, the CLEAN programme has a set of clear objectives :
· to help children mobilise
In 1997, the programme was initiated in Meghalaya in partnership with the Bethany Society, an NGO based in Shillong. In 1998, J.B. Academy - a school - started the third centre in Faizabad. CLEAN provides a variety of events and activities for children to participate in and help them relate to their environment and work towards improving it. As members of CLEAN, students have been monitoring the quality of drinking water, making observations of the environmental conditions in their area of monitoring. They have raised different issue-based campaigns, have conducted different types of environmental surveys and taken part in exhibitions as well as initiated action projects for environmental improvement. The CLEAN Annual Meet provides an occasion for the CLEAN members to come together and share their ideas, experiences and learnings. It is also an occasion to evaluate the performance of the members. The first CLEAN Annual Meet was held on January 29, 1999, at Vishwa Yuvak Kendra, New Delhi. The Meet witnessed the participation of 300 young budding environmentalists representing the three CLEAN Centres at New Delhi, Shillong and Faizabad. The venue wore a festive look and, at the same time, provided a purpose for the students to assemble. The children were armed with the results of the water quality monitoring that they had undertaken during 1998. This also included observations regarding the environmental quality which could possibly be affecting the quality of water and life. Presentat-ions were made very professionally and in impressive style by students who had prepared slides, transpare-ncies and posters for the purpose. A very interesting presentation in the form of a news report on the Status of Delhi’s Environment and the havoc it has created in the lives of Delhiites caught the attention of the audience and set the ball rolling for other presentations. Fingers were being pointed at the industrialists or the government for the deteriorating conditions of the environment. On one hand, the environment is being polluted by various industries and on the other hand the government and the municipalities are not able to meet even the basic need of providing drinking water. Water pollution problems are related to high levels of nitrates, fluorides, chlorides and faecal contamination of water. Another dimension to the presentation was the projection of efforts taken by each school in saving the environment. Many interesting projects like vermicomposting, paper recycling, reuse of old greeting cards as picture postcards, growing nursery of medicinal plants, campaign against the use of polybags, afforestation drives, waste management with reference to safe disposal of batteries in concrete landfills, etc. are being implemented by various schools. The students further challenged themselves, the government, the industry and the community to initiate the Herculean task of setting the environmental systems in place. At the end of all the presentations, the challenges were summarised and presented. (List of these challenges are summarised in the box at the end of this report). The highlight of the afternoon session was a cultural programme. Songs, poems and skits on different environmental themes were presented. A very well choreographed puppet show depicted the plight of Mother Earth being suffocated by pollutants. A talk and slide show was presented by four CLEAN children who had participated in the International Children’s Conference on Environment at Nairobi. They spoke about their field trips and different sessions they participated in. The children were anxiously awaiting the presentation of annual awards. Every year, the Development Alternatives' Rolling Trophy for the Best School is given to the school which has shown maximum participation in the activities of CLEAN. This year the trophy went to the jubilant team of students from DPS Noida who had shown active participation in the programme throughout the year. A ‘special effort award’ was given to DAV, Pitampura, for holding a DEAN Mela at the school level. Certificates and gifts were given to all the teachers who coordinated the programme. Students who participated in the programme for a year received the Certificate of Participation. New friends made, new ideas generated, new resolutions made - these were the opportunities the CLEAN Annual Meet provided the children. The challenges that the organisers of the programme face as we enter the next millennium is of giving a momentum to the movement. CLEAN has to become a movement of every town and city in India. And, children from each of these towns and cities should act as watchguards of their environment by monitoring the quality of water, air, biodiversity, .... By doing so, they will be empowered to demand a better environment from their parents, municipal corporations and the people at large. At the end of the day the message that emerged, loud and clear, was that "Child is the father of man". q The author is associated with the Environment Systems Branch of Development Alternatives, New Delhi.
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