It is said that "Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice". Keeping this thought in mind, I decided to do something where my knowledge is shared and spread across to all age groups. Last year I had done a workshop in Sri Lanka where I had shared my environmental knowledge with children and adults aged from 15-55. So this year I planned to do the same but instead selected little kids as my target audience.

 

I visited an NGO where children could learn and play for a few hours each day for free. These kids are from the slums and don't have enough money to spend on a government/public school. There were a few teachers that voluntarily decided to take care of these kids too.

 

When I arrived at the NGO I was very sweetly greeted by every child saying "good morning, miss", this really melted my heart because all of them were small but well-mannered. These children were from the slums of India where the quality of life is very low.

 

I had planned some activities to do with the kids at the NGO, some of them were, an environmental painting competition, a tree planting session, etc. I picked the activities as per their age because I didn?t want them to get confused in something complex while learning.

 

I started out by showing a video on nature and the threats it poses. This was a key part of the workshop because as the video was playing I explained how nature is being ruined day by day and described the effects and solutions to it. This helped them for the next activity which was the painting competition. In this they were instructed to draw anything that reminded them of nature, trees mountains, rivers, etc. Since the kids were aged from 4-8 I had to keep the topic easy to understand and draw.

 The next activity was the tree planting session, where the winners and the painting competition would plant a tree under their name. This is one of the biggest highlights of the event as the kids who planted it were very excited by the fact that it was their own tree. They even decided to water their plants every evening as they live close by. It felt so amazing to see how dedicated these little kids are to nature and environment.

 I gave out presents for the first three winners and distributed pencils, erasers and food packets to everyone present there. Their faces lit up as they received the presents because they usually don't get gifts from anyone. They very kindly said ?thank you didi? (sister in hindi) with a smile on their faces and went home. Towards the end of the event the children told me they will try their best to save environment wherever they can.

 It was just two hours activity with the kids but it will definitely last a lifetime in my heart.