Paryavaran Mitra - Nationwide ESD School Network Programme

Paryavaran Mitra is a national level school network initiative of CEE, initiated in partnership with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India. The initiative aims to create a network of young leaders from schools across the country, who have the awareness, knowledge, commitment, and potential to meet the challenges of sustainable development in their own spheres of influence. It's a K 12 initiative which promotes handprint action for sustainability.

It was initiated in 2008-09 as a campaign on Climate Change Education, and has developed as the flagship school network programme that brings together CEE's experience of three decades in Environmental Education (EE) and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

Paryavaran Mitra involves students in problem solving by engaging them in taking up handprint action projects. The action projects taken up by students may or may not lead to immediate or significant improvement, but would definitely lay the foundation for sustained efforts through learning outcomes in the form of knowledge, disposition, competencies and behaviour. In Project Based Learning (PBL), action project/s is an extensive task undertaken by a group of students to apply or illustrate classroom learning. This extends the boundary of education from information to experience.

Resource materials for the programme are provided to the schools to carry out action projects focusing on local environmental issues in the five themes of the programme, viz; Water & Sanitation, Biodiversity and Greening, Energy, Waste Management and Culture & Heritage. Link to PM website . As part of PM school network, various programmes as curricular and extracurricular initiative is offered by CEE.

For more information visit website www.paryavaranmitra.in