National Green Corps suffering from lack of money is leading to problems for the eco-clubs in Government schools.
By Surbhi Jain
Bengaluru, Jan. 17, 2019: National Green Corps (NGC) is a national school programme of the Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), which was launched in 2001 to establish a National Green Army in schools all over the country, to spread awareness on environment and carryout programmes for the betterment and improvement of the environment. Environmental Management and Policy Research Institute (EMPRI) serve as the nodal agency for the NGC in Karnataka.
According to the annual report by EMPRI, 8,500 eco-clubs have been established, covering all the 34 educational districts of the state of Karnataka. In details, there are 4,423 government high schools with eco-clubs, 2,546 government aided high schools have eco-clubs, while 1,531 government higher primary schools have eco-clubs.
According to an official named Komola from the EMPRI “This is a school programme and every year we get funding from the Central government with 5,000 rupees per school, but this year we have received less funding. We got the funding only for 7,400 schools for the year 2019. This has become difficult for us to conduct the programmes.”
NGC organises seminars, debates, and lectures. They also organise field visits and take up activities like tree plantation, cleanliness drives, both within and outside the school campuses. They start and maintain a small orchidarium seed banks. There are 113 schools only in North Bengaluru which have eco-clubs.
NGC promotes eco-friendly practices such as non-chemical pest management and use of energy efficient devices, or use of renewable energy for meeting local needs.
Komola also added, “It is very difficult for us to work with such shortage of fund and I hope this problem gets solved and we get the opportunity to teach students about the importance of our Mother Earth.”
A teacher from a government school in Bengaluru said “This is a great step taken by the government body to bring a difference in the education system, and undoubtedly, the students learn a lot.”
She also mentioned, “Children start falling in love with nature and it feels nice to see those happy faces.”
