Picture: Day 2 (May 10, 2019) participants from South and West Districts
ENVIS Hub at Forests, Environment & Wildlife Management Department, Government of Sikkim organized two-days green teacher’s training programme on 9th and 10th May, 2019 at Sidkeong Tulku Forest Conference Hall here in Gangtok for 200 schools of the State. The training programme was conducted as an ongoing effort for strengthening the implementation of the National Green Corps (NGC) School Eco-Club programme being implemented in Sikkim since the year 2000.
The training was held in batches of 100 teachers from North and East District schools on the first day and another batch of 100 teachers from South and West District schools. The training programme was based on green schools auditing focusing on water and sanitation at schools. Green schools auditing is a nation-wide programme based on the Green Schools Audit manual titled ‘How Green is your School’ published by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi. Resource persons from CSE Ms Aditi Sharma and Ms Shristi Jha imparted the training.
The inaugural of the training programme had the presence of Shri B.P. Pradhan IFS, Chief Conservator of Forest, Shri B B Gurung Director of Forests, Smt Kusum Gurung Joint Director (ENVIS) and DFO (Environment) of each district in an event coordinated by Shri Rajen Pradhan, Senior Programme Officer (ENVIS).
The training programme was intended to help the eco-clubs develop an efficient environment management system at schools through action oriented projects. On successful completion of the environment audit, CSE will issue green school certificate to schools depending on school’s resource efficient initiatives. The participating schools will also be registering for the National and State level Green Schools competitive programmes for 2019 session. It is also to mention that, several schools from Sikkim have been awarded amongst the top 10 green schools of the country by CSE in the past. The forest department is also providing token grant of Rs.5000/- each to eco-clubs along with resource materials like eco-club handbook, green school manual, cleanliness tools etc to 856 eco-clubs of the State annually.
Picture: Day 1 (May 9, 2019) participants from North and East Districts