Care of the Common Home’ – Vanamahotsav 2020

The stay at home has brought our students closer to nature as Mount Carmel Central School is on a journey to preserve and care for nature in response to our Pope Francis’s document entitled “Journeying for the care of the common Home” (June 18, 2020.)

During the Vanamahotsav Week from July 23rd to 30th, our students with a caring culture towards medicinal plants, fruit trees, banana cultivation, kitchen garden, flower bed, coconut grove are working on creating awareness on clean and green earth. Also observing and listening to the crowing and cackling of crows, humming of the birds and the dance of peacocks they are moving towards “a new centrality” of responsible action, of restoring the greenery to Mother Earth.

The one time rocky ground of our school campus now welcomes everyone with hustling of leaves from the trees planted from the inception of our school, the terrace garden with its fruit yielding trees, the spinach and the sweet potato creepers adding greenery, the neem trees purifying the air, the water pits curbing the rain water waste, vermin-compost pits producing natural manure, roof water harvesting replenishing the springs of the bore-well, solar panels absorbing solar energy thereby saving electricity and symbolically planting saplings by the Principal Sr Melissa along with a few staff members and the support staff on this day, have been some of the ways towards “Integral Ecology”.

No one acts alone. To get all the students involved actively in wiping the tears of Mother Earth the following class wise online competitions were organized:
LKG Colouring – a plant or a tree
UKG Vegetable print
Class I To write a rhyme on Environment
Class II Drawing/ coloring a plant with flower or fruit
Class III Drawing – a garden
Class IV To prepare a Book Mark on “Save Earth”
Class V Drawing – “A Forest”
Class VI Card Making – Mother Earth
Class VII Cartoon Drawing – Healthy Eco System
Class VIII Mask Making – Stay Safe and healthy
Class IX Poetry – Thank you Mama Earth
Class X Essay Writing – Biodiversity a global life-line
Class XI Skit/ Story Writing – The Earth in the 22nd Century
Class XII Short Film – My little garden – Terrace garden / medicinal plants / Flowering plants/ Kitchen garden

The competition on “Hydroponics” a new concept, was kept open for the students from UKG to class XII. The students participated in these competitions with much joy and enthusiasm.

Since the inception, the school has taken a number of initiatives to green the Mother Earth and wipe her tears in different ways and the efforts have been rightly recognized by various organizations through different awards like Grand Banyan Tree Award in 2012, Microsoft Create to Inspire Award in 2016, WEECA-Wonderla Environment and Energy Conservation Award for the three consecutive years in 2017, 2018 and 2019, Swachh Green School Achievement Award in 2019.

We are proud of our students who have kept alive the spirit of adorning Mother Earth with greenery.

A short video of our efforts to wipe the tears of Mother Earth was sent to the staff, students, parents and well wishers. Kindly click on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrSknDWPcN8&t=2s