Giving Nature

A Project by:Class 2B

Pant Nagar Municipal School No.3Mumbai

‘Giving Nature’- Our DesignWe, Class 2B of Pant Nagar Municipal English School, conducted a Design for Change- Giving Nature.

Our project is all aboutRecognizing the giving quality of nature…….FEEL.Giving back to nature what we take from them……IMAGINE AND DO.Recognizing our own giving nature and spreading joy through it….SHARE.

We Feel: Day 1 & 2Our children did not recognize the things nature gives us and how important they are for us to liveSo we went on a Nature Trail to Sanjay Gandhi National Park.We experienced nature at its best- a paradise amongst a concrete jungle.We learnt about tiny, tiny unique animalsWe observed their different houses: a folded leaf, a basket, a hill, a trapdoor(Support Courtesy: Sanctuary Magazine)

We Feel: Day 1 & 2We witnessed how it felt to see and play in crystal clear water.

We felt the delicateness of nature and the urgency of our problem.

We realized that our lives depend on these tiny animals surviving and nature remaining in balance

We came back refreshed and ready to make a change

We Imagine: Day 3We saw a couple of short movies on the beauty of Earth and how mankind is affecting it adversely

We thought about how WE can give back to nature using worksheets, activities, games and making posters

From this we came up with 2 solutions:Do not throw garbage. Use it productively.Do not cut trees. Take care of them and plant more.

We Do: Day 4So we set about implementing our solutions.

First we collected lots of waste materials and turned them into useful items like:

Recycled paper out of old newspaper and natural colours

Wind chimes from plastic cups and friendship bands/ ribbons/ scrap cloth

Flower vases from glass and plastic bottles, leaves and tape

Cloth Bags from old T-shirts (without sewing!!)

We Do: Day 7We also took care of 6 plants for a week and then went and planted them in a barren land.

But we wanted to do much more. So we thought of planting custard apple plants as the seeds were readily available.

And we planted 116 of those! We will continue to track their progress.

These seeds will help enrich barren deforested hills in Thane(Support Courtesy: Hariyali NGO)

We Share: Day 5After doing all of this and seeing for ourselves that we CAN make a difference, we wanted to share our success with others.

So we thought about the different people to whom we could explain our project. We wanted them to start making items out of waste like we had and start taking better care of plants.

So we targeted 4 main groups.

We Share: Day 6A Public Rally• We conducted it around the school• We told the people we met about our work and how they

can contribute

Our School• We involved our school mates in making the items• We also involved them in taking care of the plants

Other Schools• We shared our work with the 5 other schools in our building.• We shared it with the principle, teachers and children and

encouraged them to take it up too.

Our Parents and Elder Siblings- We shared with them the importance of conserving nature.- We also shared with them the ways in which they can turn common waste into useful items.- We then set about making items with waste with them.

WE CAN!—Impact On the whole we impacted 220 people and we are sure they went and shared what they learnt at home or with other children.

Everyday, the kids find new things to reuse and new ways to use waste material. Just the other day, we used chocolate wrappers to wipe our laminated worksheets!

We are more aware of nature around us and no longer pluck leaves or flowers from trees and are going around encouraging people to do the same.

WE CAN!—The FutureWe will not end with this project. Over the year, we plan to start a garden in school.

We plan to have monthly sessions on turning waste that we collect into useful items

We will also continue to visit the 116 seeds we planted and take care of them.

It has only just begun!!!

How did you help Nature today?