JAGRITI

A step ahead towards sustainable development

Cleanliness is next to godliness…..Lets bring this godliness to our villages
Spanning an area of 32, 87, 263 square kilometers, India is a vast country and includes dry deserts,
evergreen forests, snowy Himalyas, a long coast and fertile plains. The natural beauty and cultural
diversity of this place echoes a rich tradition.
And saying that is it not true that real India lies not in our metropolitan cities but in villages which are
the heart of this country. So, therefore we feel that without the development of villages, India would
not develop in long run. It is rather the self- importance of man that he thinks he owns this earth and
consequently facing innumerable problems without thinking of a sustained solution.
We believe that developing the developed sector and ignoring our original habitat is not development in
real terms. Since we know that to jump high, we need to take a step back, similarly, we shifted our focus
a bit towards the well-being of rural societies.
Here, it would of relevance to speak a few lines about our leadership academy that we study at. Ours is
VidyaGyan Leadership Academy which provides quality education to the meritorious children of rural
Uttar Pradesh. We have a sprawling campus of 40 acres with lush green surroundings and we can say
that we are living a world class life style. The fact is that our life is made easy and comfortable by the
people of the nearby villages. We decided to support our supporting staff to make their life a bit easy by
managing all the garbage that they produce. It was our turn to do our bit for Butaina the neighboring
village which is devoid of every basic need. Since we are utilizing so much of man power from these
neighboring villages, we owe to pay back to them by making their life a bit easy in whatever way that we
can. So we decided to first interact with the villagers. Interacting with them, the first problem that we
could understand to be tackled was the management of the garbage produced by the villagers. Our
topmost priority was to train the villagers to manage the waste at the personal level as far as possible.
From recycling to making of artifacts out of this waste, our last way was creating vermicomposting pits
in their own farmlands.
Our small endeavor is to make people understand the real meaning of sustainability. This is where Jagriti
came into existence.

OUR VISION
Since the main profession of the village is agriculture, hence, a lot of agricultural waste is produced
which, if managed properly, can be a free and rich source of organic manure in the farmers. This will also
help reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides which is the major cause of depletion of the
precious soil.

OUR MISSION
Our mission is to attain cleanliness through efficient garbage management in rural villages
which are the building blocks of a prosperous, happy, clean and green India.

FUND RAISING
It was important to be self-sufficient before we could attempt to help others. Being in a residential set
up, our movement outside the campus is not very frequent so we had to raise all the required fund in
house. Our idea of supporting Butaina impressed everyone and the staff on campus did not think twice
before contributing to the society we live in and donated as much as they could. We took the
opportunity to sell handmade rakhis on Rakshabandhan and also the cards, we also sold lemonade on
sports day which was a real fun and was appreciated by all. Since, poly bags are banned in our school,
we also grabbed the opportunity to make paper packets and sold to the vendor of our school cafeteria.
We were also supported by the Commerce dept. students with their help we put our handcraft
materials (made by our friends) on sale and could raise quite some amount. The best thing that we
learned from this was to recognize the hidden creativity inside all of us.

OUR INVESTMENT AREAS

The first thing was to aware and counsel the people to dispose the garbage in a thoughtful manner. We
came to know that there is mandate by Govt. to install dustbins in every village. This we came to know
from some other village and so approached the Gram Pradhan and got the dustbins installed in the
village and for this we did not have to pay any amount. Yes, digging of pits was the next thing to start
vermicomposting. Two people from the village, Shri Rajveer Singh ji and Shri Gyanendra Singh were
really enthusiastic to get the pits dug in their place. The next task was to get the worms which was
greatly helped by Dr. Omveer Singh Ji and other staff working at Shiv Nadar Foundation Organic Farm
who even helped to meet the DDO officials.

CHALLENGES FACED
Talking about challenges, first of all our tough study routine which does not allow much scope to move
out of the campus. We had to perform extra ordinarily well to convince our teachers that we could
manage both the things.
Next was to aware the people like some knew about the conventional methods of composting but most
of them were adamant to accept something they were not used to. I mean they wanted assurance from
us on their children’s education or the purchase of their goods etc.
The village also has not developed much because of minor political rivalry. Even after having the
dustbins in place, people need to be ready to collaborate and use them thoughtfully. As it is common
everywhere, people do not willingly switch from the easy conventional methods, now, even if the
dustbins are there, it is difficult to monitor the proper disposal and segregation of the garbage.
Secondly, it was difficult for us to get the authorities involved. People of this village hardly trust and rely
on the head of the gram panchayat, so the most challenging thing was to get him become a part of this
mission.

IMPLEMENTATION
With our limited resources, so far we have been able to get three pits dug in the village. To start with,
we collaborated with The Shiv Nadar Foundation Organic Farm. Their staff Dr. Omveer Singh consented
to brief us and give a demo on the process of composting. We arranged sessions for the villagers on the
farm and our ways forward became possible and easier. The farmers were shown videos and given a
demo of how vermicomposting is to be practiced.
Mr. Rajveer Singh, is the most educated man in this village, and was the first one to volunteer for the
pits. Before we could start, he had already visited the DDO and spoken about the worms. He has a big
piece of land that he intends to use for the vermicomposting pits. He had already dug a pit which would
produce manure for around 2 bighas of land. On our second visit, two more cemented pits were dug
which are now ready for the waste to be dumped and cow dung to be put in them.
The biggest help in achieving all this was from our chemistry lab assistant Mr. Amarjeet who is from this
village and was always ready to arrange things for us.
The most important component in this chain were the youth. It did take us some time to convince them
for something which was not that important for them as they were already struggling with other vital
issues, but finally we got support from the young boys who were initially arrogant and hesitant but later
joined hands with us. In turn, we had to assure them that we are striving to make life worth in all the
possible ways. For example we arranged career counselling sessions for 10th, 11th and 12th graders
separately and also invited them to our Annual sports day program. The other vital factor were the
women who are mostly responsible for the wise and thoughtful disposal of the garbage produced in the
house or on the farms. There are around 15 women from this village who work as household support on
our campus, so we first interacted with them and convinced for the cause. We also conducted tailoring
and craft sessions for them, one session on health and hygiene and a few more.