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Eco Friendly PDF
Eco Friendly PDF
Eco Friendly PDF
Eco friendly Ganesha by the students for the
community‐Sheth Jyotiprasad Vidyalaya,
Daund, Maharashtra
By Mr. Pramod Kakade, Teacher,
Sheth Jyotiprasad Vidyalaya.
Students from our school continued
the tradition of celebrating Ganesh
Festival by making clay Ganesh Idols in
the school. A workshop is conducted
each year with help of local artisans for
students. This year about 30 Ganesh
Idols were made by our students from
clay and painted with natural colour.
Nowadays people use Plaster of Paris
(POP) to make Ganesh Idols which
does not dissolve in water, they are
painted with chemical colours that dissolve in water and pollute it.
There are many students in our school
who celebrate the festival so we
requested them to have clay Ganesh
idols in their homes and we taught
them how to make their own idols. We
also carry out a contest in school called
‘ECO‐Friendly Ganesh Utsav’ so we get
participation from more groups of
students. This year we hosted a
workshop at Giants and Young Giants
group which is our town’s equivalent
of a Rotary Club or Lion’s Club that has
middle aged and senior citizens as its
member and Young Giants comprises of
students. After the workshop the groups
themselves carried out their workshops
and reported to us about their activities.
We have also in subsequent years
educated students and the groups we
work with to not immerse their Ganesh
idols in the river but in the tank in our
school. The students collected the
‘Nirmalya’ (Flower, leaves, grass offerings
made by devotees) from the water tank after 10 days and composted it in the farms of the
students whose families had farms. The compost is then used as fertilizer for the plants.
A HANDPRINT ANALYSIS
As a result of the awareness campaign
about 530 individuals and students have
had Eco friendly clay Ganesh idols in
their homes or communities. 7‐8 kg of
clay is used to make a 1ft clay idol in the
meanwhile a POP idol of the same
height needs 5 kg of POP.
We might have saved POP required for
530 Ganesh idols from going into the
river, i.e. 2650kg of POP. In addition to this students collected Nirmalya at the tank which
was not quantified this time.
Some reactions of participants at the workshop:
“Moulding clay Ganesh idol and using that idol in Ganesh Festival is an excellent experience
for me and my friends we learnt the skill of moulding idols from the teachers and want to
become real Paryavaran Mitra”
‐ Avadhut Walake. President, Mangalmurti Bal Ganesh Mandal, Nene Chawl, Daund ,Pune
“We saved a lot of POP and Nirmalya from going into the river. At first we were not ready to
use clay Ganesh idol because POP Idol are good looking but when we realised the demerits of
using POP we started to wanted to use clay which Is environment friendly.”
‐Ganesh Gholap. President, Vakratund Bal Ganesh Mandal Gandhi Chowk Daund Pune