‘Earthian’ awards for schools, colleges
The winners of the first ‘Earthian’ programme, designed to act as a catalyst for fostering excellence in sustainability, thought and action amongst young people in schools and colleges was announced on Saturday.
Earthian is a continuous engagement programme conceptualised by Wipro and takes place in two phases. In the first phase participants are required to write a critical and well-reasoned essay on various themes related to sustainability - climate change, sustainable cities, water management and biodiversity. Participants are encouraged to explore issues through different socio-economic contexts and analyse the interrelatedness of issues.
In the second phase, the selected institutes become a part of a long-term continuous engagement programme to help the winning institutions embed the building blocks, principles and practices of sustainability into the learning process.
In its first edition, there were 1,700 registrations from across the country. Five winners each in the school and college categories were selected and the winners were awarded a trophy, certificates and cash prize of Rs 3 lakh for colleges and Rs 2 lakh for schools respectively. The winners were selected on the basis of the depth of holistic understanding of the multiple dimensions of sustainability. The awards were given away by Wipro Chairman Azim Premji.
Eminent writer Ruskin Bond, who interacted with the students on the occasion, emphasised on the need to nurture sensitivity towards nature to evolve themselves as complete human beings.
The winning schools included Prakriya Green Wisdom School (Bangalore); Rishi Valley School, (Chittoor district); Kendriya Vidyalaya, Vigyan Vihar, (Delhi); Anubhuti School, (Jalgaon); Sri Kumaran Children's Home (Bangalore).
The winning colleges include IIM-Kozhikode; IIM-Indore; IIT-Kharagpur; Indian School of Business (Hyderabad); Indian Institute of Management, (Bangalore). Instituted in association with ATREE (Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment), the TN Khoshoo Earthian awards were also awarded to the best entry based on the criteria of implementability and relevance to the Indian context.
