| Greening MM Blueprint |
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Big Medicine’s Plan of Action for Greening Mahila Mandal a) Biogas Plant: to convert MM's septic-tank based toilets into zero waste toilets, with their waste processed on-site in a biogas plant built on MM's premises; b) Alternative Energy: to generate electricity from the biogas plant to serve the schools office and class room operation during school hours; and to prospect for solar energy application; c) Zero Waste Management Plan for Neighbourhood: to request permission from the Nagar Parishad to process municipal waste from MM's neighbourhood waste dump and vegetable market, as well as from the 20-seat Sulabh public toilet; d) Rainwater Harvesting and Waste Water Management: to ulilise bio-gas effluent as nutrient rich irrigation water for school gardens; harvest rain water for water table replenishment and to meet MM's campus cleaning needs; e) Organic Gardens: to develop an organic, medicinal herb garden around the biogas plant with walkways and seating spaces using biogas slurry as organic fertilizer; develop organic roof top gardens, an organic kitchen garden and organic tree nursery on the school premises; f) Green Audit: to start a green audit on campus with teachers and students conducting the audit as a reorientation step towards environmental education (plan underway since August 2008, with complimentary training from the Center for Science & Environment, New Delhi); g) Green Curriculum Development: to work with concerned institutions to take incremental steps towards reorienting the full KG to senior secondary curriculum towards environmental education (first steps developing the program with the Udaipur School District Officer/Office involved, the National Council of Education Research & Training NCERT/Environmental Education division, Centre for Science & Environment, and presently reaching out to the State Institute for Education Research & Training SIERT, Centre for Environmental Education CEE, and Udaipur based Shikshantar); h) Website Development: to develop a section of BM's Greening India website for the Greening Mahila Mandal project, including the preliminary conference on Greening Indian Schools & Education and the project to green the Udaipur School District office premises & operations; i) Outreach to Other Schools: PD/BM will work with MM as hub, to reach out and raise awareness and partnerships with other schools and educators to develop environmental education throughout the district; (on September 20th, PD/BM held a seminar at MM for 30 school principals with the District Education Officer, NCERT & CSE participating; On October 10th, PD/BM initiated India's first consortium of Principals formed the Educators for Environmental Education and Sustainable Development, which agreed to first steps: developing schedules and start dates for their own campus green audits); j) Mass Media Outreach: MM will cooperate with PD/BM to hold press conferences, media advisories, issue press releases on on-going work; k) International Affiliations: to seek out selective global affiliations for networking, resource and information sharing, expert advise, volunteer workers and educational opportunities for MM students and teachers (PD/BM developed contact with AASHE [Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education], which invited MM's membership in AASHE; currently developing other affiliations); l) Preliminary Conference on Greening Indian Education: MM will cooperate with PD/BM to develop and participate in a regional conference in Udaipur focused on implementing environmental education for sustainable development in local and national school systems and sharing best practices to that end. (MM cooperated with PD/BM’s initiative to form India’s first local principals' consortium for environmental education, Educators for Environmental Education and Sustainable Development as a precursor step to the conference); m) Developing Financial and other Resources for Implementation of Project: work in this area is already underway; PD/BM developed NCERT's contribution of two top green curriculum experts for our first seminar on environmental education and has presented our project plan to Mr. Diwakar Gautam of the London based Rajasthani Foundation, introduced by MM; requested funding for MM’s proposed biogas plant from the Ministry for New & Renewable Energy, Biogas & Biomass, Government of India; and are in the process of developing an Udaipur-based local consortium of philanthropists to support the work at MM and other schools.
Collaborators' Acronym & Site Reference CSE - Center for Science and the Environment NCERT - National Council of Education Research & Training/Environmental Education SIERT - State Institute for Education Research & Training CEE - Centre for Environmental Education Shikshantar |