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Eco-Club Garden  

The Eco Club is a special club whose aim is to promote environment. It was established in 2001. Each year we change the members of Eco Club in order to provide an opportunity to all who are interested to be members. It includes students from grade IV to IX. These students have good knowledge about the protection and preservation of the environment.

Most of the activities are practical in this club. It takes a long time to complete the work. In each class, there are four representatives of the Eco-Club including a lay boy, a lay girl, a nun and a monk. We have a board magazine called Eco-Mangal which is organized by Eco-Club members. It contains the articles written by students. After every three months we change the articles and now we’ve reached 10 volumes.

This summer we have planted vegetables and fruits around the school compound. We are doing this to provide knowledge to kids by doing things. We can make our surrounding clean and green.

The person who teaches and guides us about planting is none other than Dawa Norbu Lama. He is from Darjeeling, India. He is very kind and loving towards SMD kids and also a hard-working man. Because of his great help Eco­-Club members have succeeded in planting various types of vegetables and fruits around the school compound. All the members of Eco-Club are very grateful to him. We also keep our school surroundings clean by involving all the Eco Club members and convincing other students to clean the school compound once a month.

We have a compost heap in our school, which is run by the Roots and Shoots members. (Roots and Shoots is Dr. Jane Goodall’s international organization for kids. sb) We use this compost to help our new plants survive. It is very useful for the plants in the school and we don’t have to buy compost from the market. We are learning as well as teaching our younger brothers and sisters about the importance of keeping our surrounding clean, green and peaceful.

On the behalf of Eco-Club I would like to give thanks to all those who have been supported us. We are very happy to learn about he environment and to practice our leadership skills.

Here are the pictures of the all the plants in the garden, planted by the Eco club. I have sent pictures of cabbage, gourd, ladies' fingers, chilies, tomatoes, and beans. I didn't know how to send pictures through email but I learned from Karma Yangchen D525 (a senior) so I am really happy about it. And thanks to Lori Goldman, one of our volunteers, because of her curiosity about Eco club I learned a lot. Now our plants are also growing well and we are working co-operatively.
   

Roots and Shoots

The roots and shoots program began when 6 students gathered with Dr. Goodall on her front in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1991. The students were fascinated by animal behavior and concerned about the state of the environment. But their schools didn't cover this topic. The students wondered if they could further these interest through out of school activities. Their conversation ranged from how to help Chimpanzee to how their acting might affect their communities. The sixteen returned to their school with a task: find other interested young people and take action. And so the roots and shoots program was born. Since then, roots and shoots have spread rapidly.

Roots and shoots engaged and inspire young through community service and service learning. Founded by Dr. Jane Goodall, our school has also one member of roots and shoots program. And we inspire each individual to take action to make the world a better place for people, animal and environment. And roots and shoots group show care and concern in three areas:

The human community,
Animals
Environment.

Compost is a mixture of decayed plants, food, etc that can be added to soil to help plants grow. Compost is made by billions of microbes (fungi, bacteria, etc) that digest the yard and kitchen wastes (food) that we provide for them. For composting we required some basic things like: Air, sunlight and lime (minerals)

Our school has been doing compost since from the year 20004. Some of our students joined in the roots and shoots group in 2005 A.D so, now the compost is being done by the roots and shoots. On 11th August on Saturday, roots and shoots group remade the compost and took out the decayed compost. It's very difficult to take out decayed compost because there are lots of insects. Anyhow we managed to take out the decayed compost without killing any insect. And we took out 4 sacks of decayed compost and that compost was used by the Eco-Club members for plantation within the compound of SMD.

There are lots of trees in the SMD compound and also E-co club planted more trees to make the environment green and clean. And we roots and shoot groups are planning to put name plate to each and every trees with several aim. The main aim to put name plate is to make all students to know which trees are.

Our goals

  • To foster respect and compassion for all living tings and to promote understanding of all culture and beliefs, and inspire each individual to take action to make the world a better place for people, animals and environment.
  • To demonstrate care and concern for all animals.
  • To help young people develop self-respect, confidence in them.

SMD Roots and Shoots.

Written by: Roots and Shoots member