Activities
Global Green Action Week
Theme ‘Safe & Sustainable Food for All’
Green Action Week (GAW) is a global people’s campaign for sustainable consumption. Green Action Week (GAW), observed each year during the first week of October, is a global people’s campaign to promote sustainable consumption. Around 50 organisations in 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, North- and South America are participating in the campaign each year. Green Action Week is an initiative by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC). CESDI was one of the implementing partners in India and partnered with Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) in the campaign for 2017
CESDI launched the campaign with conducting awareness programmes on good and safe food of two hours at 7 different schools in Kottayam. Resource persons, Sunil K George, Dr Thomas George, and Dr Sunil G Nair advocated and inspired children and parents to practice and promote the use of organic traditional food products. A mobile video film competition was an innovative idea to serve the core purpose of GAW (India) which directly reflects in its very theme of ‘Safer Sustainable Food for All’. Total 17 entries with time duration of 5 minutes were received from all over Kerala. The best and second-best entries were awarded the Golden Leaf and Silver leaf Awards.
Further a stakeholder consultation meeting, titled as ‘Children’s Food Parliament’ was held where 128 students actively participated from 12 different schools. Next to this a Press Conference by children was also organised at Kottayam Press Club. Five student leaders from different schools presented the food agenda prepared by them. The concept of developing ‘Child Friendly Food Schools’, taken up by the authorities with the initiative of CESDI was an important achievement to assure sustaining impact in long term.
In 2017, CESDI was ranked first at national level in terms of quality of proposals and also in terms of implementation of activities under the campaign, among the 12 partners.
Theme: Sharing Community
Community Empowered Smart School
In 2018 also, CESDI was one of the implementing partners and partnered with Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC) in the campaign for 2018. CESDI conducted activities on the theme ‘Community Empowered Smart School’. The objective was ‘Better the physical environment (food, attire etc.) of the students in the chosen school, for improving the quality of education.
Some of the activities were; Concept sharing workshop, Workshop involving children, parents and teachers, Support to team training, Collective Action Programme, Personality Development Programme, Orientation Programme for teachers, Workshop for parents, Workshop for children etc. Mr. Raghunath P., Mr. C.V. Chacko, member, Grama Panchayat, Panachikkad and Mr. N. Srinivasan, Principal, Govt. Higher Secondary School, Palakkad, Smt. Padmakumari and Abraham Kurien, Mr. Sijo Jacob, National Trainer, JCI, Mr. P. Devaraj, Director, Cosmic Maths, Idukki, Mr. Giby P. Abraham, State Co-ordinator, C Dit., Govt. of Kerala, Mr. George Pulickan, Editor, Asianet, Thiruvananthapuram, Mr. Jijo Chittady, Thodupuzha, Mr. Sunil K. George, Parents’ circle, Kottyam and Mr. Philipose K., farmer served as resource persons in various sessions/workshops.
In addition, weekly counseling was carried out to identify lack of keenness in study, behavioral dis-order and earning crisis among the students. Altogether four counseling sessions have been conducted. With the aim of encouraging reading habits, a Community Library was established with books collected from children and general public.
Programme on the flood in Kerala
Children visited the flood affected area and interacted with the people suffered on account of the great disaster to understand the sharing happened during the floods. Brain storing sessions were organized to institutionalize and sustain the sharing beyond the natural calamities.
In 2018 also, CESDI was ranked first at national level in terms of quality of proposals and also in terms of implementation of activities under the campaign, among the 12 partners