Victorious Kidss Educares students clean up garbage in Kharadi; later plant saplings

PUNE: In a novel initiative, four students of Victorious Kidss Educares, took up the take of cleaning up parts of Kharadi and within two months, they have literally changed the face of the city's suburb that has been rapidly developing since five years. The students have cleaned up all the garbage in various parts of Kharadi that was randomly dumped by the neighbouring societies, construction workers, shops and restaurants. After cleaning up the areas, the students have not stopped; they have also planted saplings to beautify the areas so that further dumping is avoided.

The school is affiliated to the International Baccalaureate (IB) board and as part of the community project the students of eighth grade.

Students Aadi Karnavat, Aaryan Dharani, Neel Jain and Yuvraj Bhosale who were part of this initiative said that their inspiration came when they noticed filth covered open plots of land located in the middle of residential areas with lots of garbage while going to school everyday.

Karnavat said, "to tackle chronic garbage dumping spots in various parts of the city, we found a resolution for the pressing issue and started working to convert this land into a beautiful park."

Dharani said that their objective was to reduce the dumping and make the area garbage free to be utilised by both kids and adults. Jain said that the group of students created a proposal for the beautification of the area, a 3D model in sketchup on how to do plantation, created a beautiful walkway, added benches and some garbage bins so that it would become a public park.

The students are accepting donations in the form of
• Saplings
• Funds
• Human resources to work as volunteers

"We met with the health and sanitation inspector for Kharadi, Sushma Mundhe and sought her guidance and support. Under her mentoring, the area got cleaned up, followed by an awareness drive was taken up on waste segregation for residents and local shopkeeper," said Jain.

The students took commitment from local nursery to donate 55 plants. They reached out the garden department of Pune Municipal Corporation to get their commitment to delivering soil for that project. Simultaneously, they sent messages on a Kharadi Swachhata group to seek volunteer help and support for the first plantation drive. The first plantation drive was conducted in December with the help of our project team members, project supervisor and parents. While the initial support from local residents was lukewarm, halfway through the drive the students got help from local residents for watering the plants.

Bhosale said, "We did a second plantation drive in January, for which Viman Nagar Bio-diversity park donated us around 35 herbal plants. During this drive, children from 5-year olds to 13-year olds joined us and inspired some more adults to participate. We also did a fundraiser at school by selling shakes, sandwiches, soft drinks and managed to collect about Rs. 8000. We also reached out to Adar Poonawalla foundation to get this commitment for installing trash bins."

President of Victorious Kidss Educares, Robbin Ghosh, said that, "The teaching and learning pedagogy of our school is coupled with IB curriculum and Vedanta. The result brings in balanced children, who make this world a better place to live. These students become strong leaders of family, community and the world through these teachings."

Ghosh said that, the project focussed on community and service, encouraging students to explore their right and responsibility to implement service as action in the community.