Amritsar (Manawala): 1st October, 2011………………..
BY RASHMI TALWAR
Using a grass cutter to clear the area of overgrown grass, trimming plants at a park at the Community Health center in Manawala near Amritsar, 13-students of Delhi Public School practically exhibited and implemented the Gandhian principle of “Dignity of labour” with this unique cleanliness drive as a part of the Gandhi Jayanti Celebrations.
Students of the School’s Eco Club undertook the task and removed debris, stones, paper, as well as de-weeding the plants and water washed the benches at the park under the supervision of two teachers in three hours to beautify it, informed the School Principal Mrs Sangeeta Singh.
The activity was part of the part of the week long Gandhi Jayanti celebrations by the School. The cleanliness drive was under the ‘British Council’ programme of “The Grand Banyan Project” an environmental project for educational institutes of India.
In the morning two environmental activists a father and son duo of Sushil Duggal (52) and Arpit Duggal (24) both engineers, on a mission to plant 10,000 saplings in north India were invited for a tree plantation drive. The duo on a bike had traveled from Jaipur covering nearly 1100Kms through Rajasthan, Haryana and would cover 7-northern states including Jammu&Kashmir, Uttrakhand, UP, Himachal Pardesh and Delhi in a 20-day tour. Distributing pamphlets, addressing students as well as general public at temples, Gurdwaras and dargahs, spreading the message of environmental protection; they have planted 3,920 saplings each bearing a number-name tag.
In addition to that, the week-long celebrations at DPS would see competitions on designing a ‘khadi’ uniform with school logo, declamations contests on topics of ‘Nelson Mandela & Mahatma Gandhi’
‘Their ‘Methods of Struggle’; ‘Life Style’ and ‘Outcome of struggle’. Besides, poems on the Mahatma, creative writing on, ‘Ends & means to be pure?’ ; ‘ If Gandhi was alive today’; ‘One little step is enough for me’; ‘Power of prayer’ ; apart from ‘Importance of Swadeshi & Khadi’, ‘Significance Dandi March’, ‘Non- Cooperation movement’ as topics of debate.
