Within a week of Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealing to citizens to pick up the broom to clean their surroundings, several city-based schools have begun a ‘Swachh Bharat Swachh Vidyalaya’ campaign while others are gearing up for the same.
Most of the schools in the campaign follow the CBSE syllabus. As per the CBSE website, the campaign will continue till the end of the month.
The initiative was kicked off by Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Zubin Irani earlier this week and aims to involve students, teachers and parents, along with School Management Committee members.
With great enthusiasm, several students picked up the broom to eradicate cobwebs, wipe fans and lights, dusted and wiped furniture, mopped and washed the floors.
Deekshita Raghu, a class 12 student of Kendriya Vidyalaya, M.G. Railway Colony who cleaned her classroom and library earlier this week along with her classmates, said, “I was glad to contribute to my own school. We want to carry out such activities more often. Although we were asked to clean for about 40 minutes, we were at it for almost double the time.”
J. Anantha Padamanabhan, principal, Kendriya Vidyalaya, M.G. Railway Colony, said that the campaign helped revival Gandhian ideology of lending labour for the public good.
Mansoor Ali Khan, member, board of management, Delhi Public School (DPS), Bangalore and Mysore said that five DPS schools would carry out the drive after the Dasara vacations. “Children are the perfect ambassadors to inculcate civic sense,” he said and added that students and staff would undertake a cleanliness drive in their schools while their NSS clubs would go to villages.
As per the directives of the ministry, schools can involve students in cleaning classrooms, laboratories, libraries, toilets and kitchen sheds, and conduct essay writing, painting and debate contests on cleanliness and hygiene.
State Education Department official say that they are yet to hear from the Ministry of Human Resource Development on this campaign.
(The Hindu)
