Green Schools Manual

January 29, 2008

This manual is designed as a self learning and assessment tool so that teachers can work with students to audit their use of natural resources and to experiment with environment friendly practices. The GSP Manual is available in English, Hindi, Kannada, Punjabi and Urdu.

We started the Green School Programme with a simple idea.We know that environmental challenges are growing; we also know that the challenge, however enormous, will need eachone of us to get involved. It will need us to change the way we manage natural resources; alter our consumption patterns sothat we can do more with less; and innovate with current technologies so that we can improve the environment around us.We wanted to develop a programme, which would help us learn. Not just the idea but the practice of making change ‘work’.We believe that it is always best to learn by doing. It is always best to do by learning.

It is this simple idea we converted into the Green School Programme. The manual provided the tasks for schools to begin therating of their performance. Each step provided the criterion; its weightage and the method by which we could learn how greenwe were and how green we could be.

Over the last two years, the idea has gathered momentum. More and more schools across India are using the manual to be apart of this learning exercise. They have learnt that what they know is not enough to protect the environment and what theypreach is often not easy to practice. But they have also learnt the rationale of what they should do that will make a differencein the world.

This is the idea in practice. We know people all over the world are learning, to their horror, that they have no idea of what itmeans to be “sustainable”. That in spite of all they did and thought they did, the disaster of climate change is real, anddefinitely happening. They are realising that combating this global challenge means reinventing what is considered to be goodenvironmental management.

For us, this is not a rating programme for ranks, marks or awards. It is a learning programme for building a new generation ofpeople who are prepared to change the future. Our consumers of tomorrow will have even less of a chance to correct all themistakes they will inherit from us. We are leaving behind a pretty bad world for them. But we know that they can make adifference if they can distinguish between the different shades of green – believing but not practicing and practicing but notmaking a difference.

We hope that our idea will work. We hope you will be engaged with us in being the change we believe in.