HUDA ropes in kids to save city’s greenery from heat
THE AGENCY IN COLLABORATION WITH A GROUP OF CHILDREN CALLED PURE HEARTS HAS TAKEN UP THREEDAY ‘DONATE A PLANT CAMPAIGN’ BEGINNING JUNE 2
T h i s Wo rl d Environment Day on June 5, the Haryana Urban D e v e l o p m e n t Au t h o r i t y (Huda) plans to focus entirely on maintaining the existing green patches in the city that are deteriorating due to the extreme heat.
Huda in collaboration with Pure Hearts- a group of children ( ages 5- 14) - have taken up the ‘ Donate a Plant campaign. Beginning from June 2, the three day initiative would include identifying the green patches that have been drying up and also distributing potted plants to residents.
Pure Hearts is a group of children from different schools like The Shri Ram School in Aravali, Scottish High International, The Heritage School and others in Gurgaon, wh o h ave c o m e t o g e t h e r to take up social and civic issues with the authorities.
Pallavi Srivastav, head communications & outreach, The Heritage School, said, “The 21st century students’ readiness has been the guiding principle for adopting new educational practices. What we constantly strives towards is to create opportunities for students to exercise active citizenship in collaboration with governance agencies in Gurgaon.”
The young civic activists also approached deputy com- missioner TL Satyaprakash who became the first person to sign the pledge.
“It has been often noticed that although several plan- tation drives take place in the city but the success rate of such drives are very low. Therefore, the initiative focuses on maintaining the existing green patches in the city instead of a plantation drive,” said Jhanvi Sareen from The Heritage School and a member of Pure Hearts.
“We received a very encouraging response from the district administration in taking our campaign forward and spreading the awareness,” she added.
Being an active member of the campaign, Huda also appreciated the initiative by the children.
“This year there is very little chance that the saplings will survive due to the extreme weather. Therefore we will focus more on trying to save those saplings planted in our previous drives,” said VK Nirala, executive engineer, Horticulture, Huda.