EarthTalk At St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore

EarthTalk is a powerful medium to engage the audience into inspiring interactions on sustainable practices, addressing apposite issues and carving out solutions. Its thought provoking and movement driven. At Earth5R, talks on varied environmental subjects have been conducted since its inception and has proved to be very effective in getting people aware about the measures that can be taken by communities at any given level to do their bit.

One such talk was conducted by Syed Mohammed Hussaini, an Earth5R member from Bangalore at the St. Joseph’s Pre-University College. The two-day talk was held on 4th and 5th of July,2016. Being an old student of  St. Joseph’s College, Syed thought of going back to his Alma Mater and sharing the environmental knowledge gained by him with his fellow juniors. The students were oriented regarding the socio-environmental problems faced by the world today.

He conducted 3 sessions for an audience of over 500 students combining the two days. Although being a novice at conducting talks, Syed held them well single-handedly. He began with orientating them with the principles and the work done by Earth5R, also expounding the 5R’s of environmental protection.

He covered a gamut of topics from the generic knowledge of depletion of resources to knowledge of non-renewable sources of energy. The students, although being well informed of such issues, seldom are taught the ways of curbing the issues at grass-root level. Such topics were covered in this EarthTalk.

The children showed keen interest in learning about the various techniques of recycling paper and plastic. They learnt about techniques such as making paper mache and how to turn waste into usable objects. Hence they were exposed to a new and upcoming concept of upscaling and also understanding how upscaled products are different than recycled ones.

Learning not just about the work an individual can do for the environment, the focus shifted towards bringing about social changes. Never having heard of the field of social entrepreneurship, the children along with the teachers were amused to know how women empowerment, waste reduction, sustainability and livelihood generation can be interwoven into a single facet through social entrepreneurship.

Grateful for the effort made by Earth5R  at exposing the children to the big world of sustainability, they shared that the event proved to be beneficial as the children were already learning about environmental issues in their academics and the session inspired them to go deeper into the subject.

Report by Syed Hussaini, Edited by Anushka Mehta, Photos by College staff