Meet the change makers, the school principals on the mission for a clean and healthy city for our children.
Priyadarshani Purohit
Principal of Huzurpaga’s Sou. Shobhatai Rasiklal Dhariwal English Medium School, Laxmi Road, Pune.
“The members of the school governing council are very supportive of good initiatives. Even the school alumni are very active in the school welfare activities”, says Priyadarshani madam, the principal of the school, Sou. Shobhatai Rasiklal Dhariwal English Medium school of Huzurpaga.
She is the first principal to participate in the Mission City Chakra to implement the rules,
- No plastic tiffin boxes and plastic water bottles from 2024-25 onwards.
- No plastic/ laminated paper textbook covers from 2024-25 onwards.
What is the significance of these two rules?
We have about 1200 schools in Pune city, comprising of lacs of students. A plastic tiffin lasts for about two years on average. From 1st std to 10th, a student uses about five to six plastic tiffin boxes. The same is the case with the plastic bottles.
The utility of a textbook is only for one academic year. The plastic cover to protect the book will remain in the environment as waste for many years.
Plastic is recycled only two to three times, after which the quality of the material deteriorates so much that nothing further can be made out of it. After a few rounds of recycling, a plastic product becomes waste. At the dump year, it degrades into smaller and smaller pieces called microplastic.
As of now, microplastics have entered our food chain. We eat, we drink, and we breathe microplastics.
Some chemicals added to plastic in various stages during manufacturing are highly toxic. Some of them are proven to be carcinogenic, some are endocrine disruptors causing hormonal issues and fertility challenges.
Turning off the tap on plastic is essential for the health of the people and the environment.
A shift from a plastic tiffin to a steel tiffin, plastic bottle to a steel bottle, and no cover or only paper cover policy will eliminate waste. Mission City Chakra aims to eliminate waste generation starting with these three products at the school level.
Association with Mission City Chakra
Mission City Chakra began in July 2023 at the Centre for Sustainable Development under the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE). GIPE is a 93-year-old premier research institute with an equally glorious past and bright future like Huzurpaga.
Instead of creating waste and then finding ways to manage it, at Mission City Chakra we implement measures to reduce the waste generation itself.
Pune city is a rapidly growing city. Reaching out to every individual in the city is tiring and virtually impossible. Sole awareness generation has its limitations when it comes to behavior change.
Hence Mission City Chakra collaborates with the ‘Intermediate Policy Makers’ to bring about a change through the combination of policy enforcement supplemented by targeted awareness generation.
When we conceptualized this project for the school segment, we approached some principals for their input one of them was Priyadarshani madam. We shared our idea with her requesting her candid feedback.
She liked the concept emphasizing the need for source reduction measures. She also put a stamp of approval on our strategy of policy enforcement sighting the growing waste management problem in the city. Bothered by the garbage dumps piling up by the roadside which she sees on her everyday commute to the school, she was convinced about the need for a policy for rapid impact.
Encouragement meant a lot to a project which was still in the embryonic stage at the time.
About Huzurpaga schools
Founded in 1848, Maharashtra Girls Education Society’s Huzurpaga has a rich heritage. Eminent social reformers like Justice Mahadeo Govind Ranade, Dr. Sir. Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, and Mr. Shankar Pandurang Pandit realized the need to educate women and established a school for girls. The alumni list includes very prestigious names including the former prime minister of India, Indira Gandhi.
There are five schools at the Laxmi Road campus. The English medium school started in 2011. They also have a campus in Katraj. KG to PG education facility is available here.
About Priyadarshani Madam
Priyadarshani Madam holds a Master’s degree in Electronics. With encouragement from her father-in-law and mother-in-law, both teachers themselves she completed her Bachelor’s and Masters’s in Education, B. Ed and M.Ed.
She taught environmental science subject for many years. The project under iEARN that her students did under her guidance won the first prize and the team was invited to Japan for the next rounds.
“We all have many ideas. The role of the school principal allows me to bring those ideas to reality. School and the support from the teachers, the governing council allows me to bring about a positive impact in the lives of students and their parents.” she adds humbly.
Other initiatives
My rapport with Priyadarshani Madam goes back about five years when she approached me with the wish to manage dry leaves on the school premises in an eco-friendly manner.
Through my initiative, Brown Leaf with the vision ‘Not a single dry leaf should be burnt in India’, we designed the dry leaf composting project for her school. Leaf litter was a huge challenge for this school with a beautiful campus with old-growth trees. She could not bear the idea of leaves getting burnt or dumped as garbage. The dry leaf composting project started back in 2019 and surviving the challenging times of the Covid lockdown has continued successfully to date. The success and results of this project prompted other four schools on the campus to adopt the same. A campus-level project is in the planning stage and will begin in the coming fall season.
She is an example of what a motivated principal with her equally motivated team of teaching and non-teaching staff can achieve.
Initiatives on her wish list
She plans to start a terrace garden in the school. Her school building being the tallest in the vicinity receives unobstructed sunlight the entire day. Dry leaves compost from the premises would supply the necessary organic matter. She plans to include nirmalya from the student households in the garden thus driving it away from the river. Nirmalya though organic is detrimental to the rivers because they do not have sufficient dissolved oxygen in their waters to digest it.
Thus she plans to create a circular system for dry leaves in the premises and nirmalya.
Conclusion
We all are policymakers. We decide what is good for our households. A school principal is a more powerful policy maker with the capacity to nudge hundreds of students and their parents towards a positive change.
Principals often unaware of their power or bogged down by a daily overload of activities find it difficult to bring their wish lists into reality.
The objective of the series ‘Principals on the Mission’ is to bring encouraging stories of these change-makers and encourage other fellow principals in their institution and outside to take the first step.
Wow project, keep it up Purohit madam
Congratulations Priya Ma’am, very inspiring!
अतिशय आदर्श असा उपक्रम! मुलांना लहान वयातच काय चांगलं आणि काय वाईट हे शिकवलं तर नक्कीच त्यांची आणि पर्यायाने देशाची प्रगती होईल. खूप छान प्रियदर्शनी मॅडम.. 👏👏👏
अतिशय आदर्श असा उपक्रम! मुलांना लहान वयातच काय चांगलं आणि काय वाईट हे शिकवलं तर नक्कीच त्यांची आणि पर्यायाने देशाची प्रगती होईल. खूप छान प्रियदर्शनी मॅडम.. 👏👏👏