To improve the green cover in Anantapur city and its surroundings, Green Army, a local NGO, launched ‘Digital Slates’, a programme engaging government primary school children in the city.
The Green Army has been actively working to save existing trees and by sowing saplings wherever possible, involving a large army of volunteers.
The objective of the project is to save trees and inculcate the concept of ‘Green Anantapur’ among children, says Green Army founder A.G. Anil Kumar. “My mother Prameelamma had been distributing books to government schoolchildren in the city for the last 11 years and we decided to take this route to spread the importance of saving trees among children through initiatives like ‘Discover Ananthapuramu’. It is a part of our ‘nail-free’ trees campaign under which the volunteers have removed nails, iron rods and screws from nearly 4,000 tree trunks,” informs Mr. Anil Kumar.
Explaining further, he says loads of paper used by children to do their classwork and home work is wasted every year as they are not put to use after the teachers correct them. “We distribute digital slates to avoid the use of chalk or slate pencil which causes several breathing problems in children, besides saving paper equivalent to three big trees. This slate can be digitally wiped one lakh times,” he says.
Along with the slate, the children also get pens and pencils made of recycled cardboard boxes and paper with vegetable seeds at the upper ends. After using these pens and pencils, the children sow them in the soil or in a pot, and eventually a vegetable plant grows. Children learn the importance of recycling and reusing and develop a curiosity for raising plants and eating vegetables grown by them,” he says.
“In the first phase of the digital slates programme, we will cover 5,000 children to gauge the success of adaptation by the children. Based on the result, we will cover every child at primary school level within a 10 km radius of Anantapur city,” he added.
The Green Army intends to continue the nail-free tree programme in a big way, he said, adding “We are trying to persuade the Anantapur Municipal Corporation to implement a well-defined ‘protect-a-tree’ policy and prevent people from punching nails into trees.”
