National Green Corps programme launched

DIBRUGARH, Nov 15: The Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) launched the National Green Corps (NGC) programme to encourage participation of school children in environmental activities through establishment of ‘Eco-clubs’ nationwide.
The Assam Science Technology and Environment Council (ASTEC) has been acting as nodal agency in the State while the Centre for Environment Education (CEE)– Northeast (NE) Guwahati has been the State Resource Agency since 2002.
The ‘Ed-en’- a society for environmental education and an NGO of Tinsukia is acting as the District Implementing Agency (DIA) and has been implementing various programmes in Tinsukia district since September 2002. It has already completed the first and second phase of the programme. The ASTEC has entrusted ‘Ed-en’ with the setting of ‘Eco-clubs’ in Dibrugarh district.
Accordingly, the NGO has prepared a list of 250 schools in consultation with the Inspector of Schools in Dibrugarh and other agencies. The selected schools have been requested to submit a list of maximum 50 students, both boys and girls from class VII to the higher secondary section, for ‘Eco-club’ members, with the name of a teacher as the in-charge of the club.
According to the co-ordinator of NGC (Eco-club) and secretary of ‘Ed-en’, Dr Rishi Das, the success of NGC programme depends on these teachers. For this reason, the implementing agency is looking for persons who are dynamic and active, with the capability of involving students both in indoor and outdoor activities and other programmes of the ‘Eco-club’ movement.
Each ‘Eco-club’ will receive a grant of twenty-three thousand rupees in cash with some resource materials, Dr Das added.
The programme will be launched in the district on November 16 at a function held at the Bengali Boys’ Higher Secondary School. Similar programmes will be held at St Andrew School in Moran and Delhi Public School at Duliajan on November 17 and November 18 respectively.

THE SENTINEL