(Left to right) Khushima Saha, Adreet Roy, Aarish Mukherjee and Aarshi Pal of Indus Valley World School The Telegraph
Kushima Saha of Class V is the water monitor at home. She does not waste water and also checks if her parents and house help have shut the tap tight after use. She tells her friends to do the same.
Aarish Mukherjee of Class IV uses recycled water to water plants, as a principle. She has made her family follow suit.
Aarshi Pal of Class IV and Adreet Roy of Class III keep an eye on those littering waterbodies when on picnics and vacations.
All the four have also been watering plants in school, along with their friends, with rainwater.
The tiny efforts of these four green soldiers of Indus Valley World School were recognised when they went up on stage to receive the top award for The Water We Want Global Youth Contest 2023. The children got the award in Other Media category for six to 12 years.
The students sang a song in Hindi, Save the Rivers, to spread the message of how the rivers are drying up and there will be none left in the future. The news of the recent Yamuna flooding had also distressed them. They decided to highlight the state of our rivers and how we neglect them through their song.
The video had subtitles in English to reach out to the global audience. “Kaise tera karz chukayenge (how will we pay your debt)?” the kids ask through the song.
“When we applied for the global contest we decided to make a video. The song is an old one but we changed the lyrics. The video was made in our school and the kids were part of the brainstorming process right from the start. They felt very strongly for the cause,” said vice-principal Priyadarshinee Guha, who helped the kids in the project.
The contest saw 250 entries from 52 schools in India in the six to 12 years category. Six entries from India had made it to the final list.
The contest is an initiative of The Global Network of Water Museums (WAMU-NET), a non-profit organisation based in Venice, that was founded in 2017 to instil awareness about water heritage through interdisciplinary engagements. In 2018, it was endorsed as a "flagship initiative" of Unesco and its Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme.
“Living Waters Museum is a virtual museum which engages youth in visualising water heritage and re-imagining sustainable, inclusive and equitable water futures. We interact with children from city schools as well as those from the wetlands, trying to spread awareness through art, videos and creative projects. This is our fourth edition of the contest. Indus Valley World School children beat 98 shortlisted finalists from all over the world to the award,” said Sukrit Sen, art and outreach co-ordinator and Calcutta chapter lead of the Living Waters Museums.
According to him the creative projects submitted also included paintings from children in the Sunderbans.
“The artwork and the videos will travel to various interaction conferences and exhibitions,” said Sen.
Meanwhile the green soldiers are enjoying all the limelight. Sara Ahmed, founder-director of Living Waters Museum and vice-president of WAMU-NET, came to the school to give away the awards.
“It was an amazing experience to receive an award this big. I am so proud,” said Aarshi Pal, all the more motivated to spread awareness about the depleting water resources.
“We were thrilled beyond words to bag this prestigious award on a global platform for our country. It speaks volumes about the impact art-integrated education has on children of different age groups. Our young participants sang with tremendous feeling as they pledged to save the precious water resources of our country. I have no doubt that these children will grow up to be true champions of nature and the environment.” said school director Amita Prasad.