Environment and me - a story that started here on this platform. I've had an exceptionally intellectually enriching experience serving as the 24th Eco-Generation Ambassador to South Asia, 22nd and 23rd Eco-Generation Ambassador to Afghanistan and the 21st Eco-Generation Ambassador to India. I also got the chance to be the Global Facilitator for the Samsung Junior Academy in 2019. It's been more than 5 years since my joining this amazing Environmental Networking Platform and I can't stop appreciating all that it has to offer to all the young environmental enthusiasts across the globe. It is this platform which motivated me to advocate for the inclusion of SDGs in school curriculum to sensitize the future stakeholders of our world about the natural legacy that they will have to take care of.

Although we all go around talking, writing, discussing, and campaigning a good lot for the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals, in reality we've failed to infiltrate the noble idea and its essence to the grass-root level stakeholders of the society. It seems like the Sustainable Development Goals have remained like jeweled terms too expensive to be afforded to be understood by a middle class family in the remote and poor nooks and corners of developing countries like India. But how can we even imagine about something sustainable without involving the future stakeholders - students - in it ? To make students comprehend and treat the Sustainable Development Goals with clarity and grave seriousness, I'd propose incorporate "Sustainable Development" as a graded subject in the curricula of different schools and colleges. And this should be done for 2 reasons :

1. Once it's examined and graded, people will take the subject and its matter seriously, and thus, devote considerable time to understand the issue. It'll get as much as importance as science and technology get in schools and colleges. Once this happens, sustainable development goals will automatically become easier to achieve.

2. A well-defined and clear boundary needs to be drawn between sustainable development and environmental studies. Schools and Colleges often confuse the two, whereas the two are entirely different, the latter being one of the many facets of the former.

The government in my state mandates a fortnight-long self-defense training for all college-going students in the state so as to make young students capable of guarding their own safety in the face of adversity. But what the government has very obviously sidelined is that threat isn’t always physical or in-person. In a “24x7 online” world like ours, young girls face increased risks of digital abuse and online scams since they’re never formally trained to deal with the internet and digital technology. It could be and is environmental at present. The risk is accentuated by human activities. Hence, climate security and environment protection are important defense mechanisms that every young citizen must be taught.

This is what I'm campaigning for right now - to incorporate Sustainability studies in school.