Community

Prakriti

About Prakriti

Delhi Public School, Dwarka Expressway, had started “Project Prakriti'' under the Swadharma Education in the month of May, 2023 with a vision of initiating a student led movement to build more sustainable communities. Students of Grade eighth, ninth and eleventh are participating in various sustainability oriented activities such as ecological and sustainability audits, awareness rallies and events, plantation drives, waste recycling, establishment of nursery etc, being conducted across the school with the assistance of environment experts.

The vision of the project is to progressively make the school community more sustainable and in synchronization with “Prakriti” or nature. The project seeks the formation of the “Prakriti Secretariat” composed of students, which now executes all the activities necessary for achieving the vision of the project.

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Prakriti Secretariat

Prakriti secretariat was founded on the 10th of May, 2023 by Swadharma learning at Delhi Public School, Dwarka Expressway. The secretariat also involves students and teachers of grades VIII, IX & XI . The secretariat was founded with the following objectives:

To create a student led environment movement to fulfil the environmental vision of the school.
To study the environmental impact of the school.
Analyse the impact.
Plan and execute activities to reduce the environmental impact.
Share our learning and experience with the community.

The Secretariat aims at mobilising the community to conserve the environment and generate awareness about the threats of pursuing reckless development.

The constitution was adopted on 25th August, 2023 which captures the spirit of our movement. 100+ students and 10+ teachers lead the movement with support of the school management and community. The core belief on which the movement is based is described below:

“The land we live on, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the energy we feel flowing around us are borrowed by us from our future generations. It is our ecological duty to preserve the dynamic balance of the living world for all those who will come to live on this planet we call Earth”

The student volunteers of the secretariat from grade VIII, IX & XI have already learnt the skills required to monitor the environmental impact of our actions. We are monitoring the consumption of resources by the school community in real time. The environmental impact of our consumption has been assessed and we are working to mitigate the impact with environmental positive action:

Environmental impact assessment
Accounting for carbon neutrality
Water quality monitoring, Rainwater harvesting, Waste water recycling
Solid waste segregation and recycling
Biodiversity monitoring and restoration

The real time data we collect and analyse constantly defines the nature and extent of the secretariat’s actions. We strongly believe that sharing our learning with the community around our school and offering our skills to improve the environment with them will create an example of environmentally sustainable community for many to emulate.

Our 5 Cells

Energy Bank

Students operate this division to account for the negative and positive impact that humans and their activities have on the environment. The students operating the Energy bank conduct audits for individuals and institutions. The audited balance between the negative and positive impact sets the conservation targets on an annual basis.

Benchmark - Energy consumed / Energy produced x 100

The fact that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed from one state to another is the foundation the operation of the energy bank rests upon. Everything that happens around us constantly transforms energy. Only life processes are energy positive on earth, every action taken by human beings other than living are energy negative. The purpose of the energy bank is to measure and record such transformations in the world around us and analyse which transformations disturb or contribute to the dynamic equilibrium our world exists in both, as physical and biological entities.

Climate Cell

The Climate cell focuses on auditing greenhouse gas emissions from different human activities. The emissions add to the conservation targets set by the Energy Bank. Student auditors of the division can audit operations of diverse types and scale.

Benchmark – GHGs’ sequestered / GHGs’ produced x 100

Climate is an impact of an intricate biophysical system present on our planet. In simpler terms, the interactions between the living world and the nonliving world creates the weather and climate we are dependent on. The volunteers of the climate cell have the skills to measure and analyse the changes we cause in these interactions intentionally or otherwise. We are changing the face of the earth faster than ever. The impact of human numbers on the planet is compounded by the material intensity of their lifestyles to cause devastating changes in weather and climate patterns across the world. The energy bank and other divisions contribute data to the climate cell to ascertain impact and plan mitigation.

Sapling Collective

Promoting biodiversity, especially of plants, is the most effective way of mitigating the negative impact of human activities on the environment. The division gets offset targets from the Energy Bank and Climate Cell. The students work to increase floral diversity through plantation activities both in and out of the school. In urban areas there is limited scope for promoting floral diversity so the division partners with forest areas close to Gurgaon to achieve its targets.

Benchmark – Target achieved / Target given x 100
Benchmark – A score closer to 1 on Simpsons index.

The biodiversity around us is the magical web that life builds around us. It fulfils our basic requirements and also helps create the weather and climate patterns that provide the security for our survival. We have changed the biodiversity of earth beyond recognition. We cannot restore the web of life to its original set up and we do not have much idea about the web of life we have today. We also do not know the nature of changes we bring about and their multitude. The best we can do is to consult our elders and restore biodiversity with local species we can bring back. Our volunteers have the capacity to:

Water Vault

Students conduct the water audits on a periodic basis. The division strives to achieve sustainability in water consumption by finding ways for attaining the benchmark of water use.

Benchmark – Rainwater harvested + Waste water recycled / Water consumed x 100

The division focuses on ways to minimize solid waste production through changes in lifestyle. Once the waste is generated, ways which make maximum recycling, reuse possible are researched upon and promoted.

Benchmark – Solid waste reused, recycled / Solid waste produced x 100

Waste to Wealth Corporation

Solid waste is a product of our ignorance and negligence. It is so true when we say “solid waste is not waste but a misplaced resource”. The culture and values of a society are visible in the way they manage their solid waste. It is a matter of great shame that solid waste litters our land and chokes our water bodies. We have partially managed the solid waste produced by our school by collaborating with a vendor to collect it from our school. We have started recycling paper both, in school and with help of industrial recycling. We also have a compost pit for food waste. We have worked hard to ensure segregation of solid waste at source. Our volunteers have the capacity for: