Greenpeace Kolkata's (Calcutta) Rainbow Warrior school fest got a dozen schools together at City Centre to start their journey in environmentalism.
Rainbow warriors learn young
By Joshua Abraham
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| PlanetPoints
From ESR CL 2011
Category: EVENT
Log no. : ESR E/G/01/01/11 Event Name: Rainbow Warrior Fest 2011
Date: 28-30 January, and 6 January, 2011
Venue: City Centre (Mall) Salt Lake, Kolkata, India
Organised by: Greenpeace Kolkata/India
Event description: High school student festival organised to create awareness on environmental issues among student teens, as well as Greenpeace’s role in battling these issues. Promotion of Greenpeace and its objectives.
Score: 2 Planets [+] Awareness within the target group is crucial for environmental protection as this group is poised to take a leading role in decisions affecting the planet. Also, influencing this group leads to planet-friendly habits which start the environmental saving process at the grassroots, lead to a snowball effect among peers. Greenpeace has made a significant and measurable contribution to environmental protection. Few structures set up, and those made of ecofriendly fabric. Direct hands on experience in Planet evangelism through events.
[-] Event was held away from most of the schools, at Salt Lake. CO2 production commuting on the fest days could have been minimised by holding the Fest at a more central location, accessible by surrounding institutions by foot. Since the fest had only 10-12 participating institutions, finding a suitable venue would not have been a problem. Lighting of the exhibition are could have been avoided if it were roofless, since the fest was held during the day, in Kolkata winter. Accoustic music competition would use less energy than the heavily amplified music at the open-air avenue, and cause less sound pollution at a public venue. | | | .Feedback! |
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|  © 2009 EarthSmiles.net . All rights reserved. Made from 100% recycled pixels. Fests are an integral part of a student’s life. Most schools encourage them as these occasions that give the common student an opportunity to interact with students of other schools, and play an influential role in the lives of teenagers – a confluence of ideas and varied expression. It also gives students a chance to display their latent talents, some of which are discovered through these events. Now, what if there was such a fest where you could grandstand your talents, yet, in the process learn something about the environment and the small personal acts that can prevent it from ultimate destruction?   There is actually. The Rainbow Warrior fest organised by enviro-evangelists Greenpeace, at City Centre (Salt Lake, Kolkata, India – 28-30 January, 2011) was just that. The first day of the fest started with a Scavenger Hunt, which had participants solving clues that led them to shops at the City Centre Mall. All the clues related to different habitats and surroundings and though this exercise was fun, I personally didn’t see how this could have made much of an impact. However, an interview with some of the participants revealed a newfound enthusiasm in them to save the planet – even if they didn’t exactly know how to go about it. But this exercise would help them associate the clues with the various habitats and get them thinking – without being lectured to. One of the participants on the team of Bharati Vidya Bhavan school found the exercise very thrilling – it made him feel like a character from Dan Brown’s “Angels and Demons”! The skit competition followed, where each school had to organize a skit on the topic of climate change, which seemed to be quite a hot topic at the fest. The skits were humorous and many of the participants chose comical characters to explain the atrocities of climate change in a light manner yet at the same time making their audience aware of our everyday contribution towards it (good or bad) and how we could cease to become agents of (harmful) climate change. The second day of the fest started of with the ‘Hold a Council’ event. As the name suggests participants from different schools had to hold a council but instead of representing themselves or the institutes they hailed from they represented an endangered animal and spoke on behalf of the animal. This exercise was quite innovative as it helped us see things through the animal’s perspective. As part of the exercise the participant had to create a representation of the animal and this lead to many amusing masks being worn as they spoke. While this event was fun and gave light to many facts, a more practical event was about to begin. This was the Plastic Hunt. Out of all the events of the fest this event I rate this as best. It was basically a contest to see which school could switch more eco-friendly paper bags for eco-horror plastic ones - from the shoppers at the mall, within the specified time limit. The thing I liked most about this event was the teams were actually competing to make the planet a better place and while the participants were engrossed in this the volunteers of the fest were also roaming about the mall trading plastic bags for jute ones. If only our governments would learn this! I don’t know the exact figures but that’s a lot of ‘saving’ done! The third day of the fest was also quite enlightening with very strong questions being asked at the debate, and the participants aggressively striving to make their point on the motion “Alternate energy is too expensive to be used in a developing country like ours.” A lot of questions asked, and were answered, just what was needed to bring everyone up to environmental speed. Speaking to the judges of the debate later, revealed that certain school education boards in India are scrapping environmental education as a compulsory subject, including the popular ICSE (Indian Certificate of Secondary Education) and ISC (Indian School Certificate) examinations. In a way I agree with this academic decision. Environmental Education should not be forced on someone. People should do it because they want to do it. Sometimes not giving people a choice makes them hate the decision forced upon them and they would do anything with a vengeance to oppose that choice. This is especially true with teenagers and young adults. I believe that instead of being just a subject, Environmental Education is a way of life. Thus this Greenpeace fest managed to influence many people - including me… and I’m an EarthSmiler! Hopefully with green efforts put in by the students inspired by events such as The Rainbow Warrior Fest, there will come a time where ‘man-made causes’ is not mentioned under environmental detriment in EVE schoolbooks. Peace. And Smiles. Waiting for the participants to register.... Making the right switch... |
