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Metro Plus
Catch them young
WHILE IT is a good idea to get children to appreciate the importance of conservation and ecology, it is not easy to accomplish this, especially when you have the TV and the Net as your competitors. The mind-share of these media is enormous among children, going by the sheer amount of time they spend on them. If you can't beat them, use them seems to be the inspiration behind the establishment of the Multimedia Environmental Education Centre (MEEC) by the C.P.R. Environmental Education Centre in collaboration with the British Council. It is hoped that students will be able to use the facilities available at the centre to enhance their knowledge of environmental issues.
As part of this initiative, the centre had invited Adam Adamou, Environmental Consultant, U.K., to train Master Trainers here to utilise the facilities at the centre. While emphasising that any awareness or education programme should take into account local needs and concerns and be prepared to learn from them too, Adamou also pointed to another danger inherent in the use of these media for education. When a medium gets attractive, the message may often get lost in the glitter. Using the media judiciously to drive home the message is the challenge that lies ahead for those who attended the workshop conducted by Adamou.
`Kids for Tigers' is another programme conducted by the centre in collaboration with Sanctuary Asia magazine to take the message of conservation to the youth. Under this, orientation programmes were held for 100 teachers from 50 schools. Audio-visual programmes were also held in over 45 schools. The children have started a signature campaign to spread the message of conservation under which more than 35,000 signatures have been collected so far. An exciting Tiger Fest was conducted in which over 25 schools participated. The main attraction of this fest was the tiger model made out of recycled material by students of the participating schools. The best tiger model prize went to the students of Sri Sarada Vidyalaya, Burkit Road while the second and the third prizes were bagged by Sri Sivasamy Kalalaya, Mylapore and Gurunanak Matriculation, Velachery respectively. Going by the enthusiasm shown by the children, conservation does seem to be having a high priority on their agendas.
SUBASH JEYAN
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