NGC

Introduction

In the year 2001, the National Green Corps (NGC) Programme of Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), Government of India (GoI) was established in Karnataka. The Environmental Management and Policy Research Institute (EMPRI) has been declared as the State Nodal Agency to oversee the implementation of NGC Programme in the state of Karnataka on January 01, 2009. National Green Corps (NGC) Programme in the Karnataka State:

National Green Corps is a national school programme of MoEF&CC launched in 2001. The main objective of the scheme is to establish “National Green Army" in schools all over the state to spread awareness on environment and carry out action based programmes for protection and improvement of environment. EMPRI is serving as Nodal Agency for NGC in Karnataka, since Jan, 2009. As per guidelines of MoEF&CC, in Karnataka, 8500 eco-clubs have been established covering all the 34 educational districts of the State. The details of eco-clubs are as follows:

Sl.No	Category of School	No. of Eco-clubs formed
1	Government High School	4416
2	Government Aided High School	2552,
3	Government Higher Primary School	1532
Total		8,500

World Environment Day Celebration:

World Environment Day was celebrated on 5^th June 2014. Three schools from Bangalore North District participated in the event held at EMPRI. Totally 35 students from all the three schools participated and three teachers also participated in the event. The school names are mentioned below:

Sl. No.	Name of the NGC Schools	No. of Students participated	No. of teachers participated
1	Govt High School Hegganahalli	10	1
2	Govt High School Kakolu	16	2
3	Govt High School T.Dasarahalli	9	2
	Total	35	5

Shri M. Madan Gopal, IAS Addl. Chief Secretary & Chairman EMPRI was the chief guest for the event. Shri Sugur G V, IFS Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Head of Forest Force) Shri Ramanchandra, IFS Secretary & Co-Chairman EMPRI Shri P R Das Gupta, IAS (Rtd) Director, Southern Regional Centre, TERI were the guest of honour for the day.

Skit and drawing competitions related to environment and environmental issues were conducted for all the participating eco club members of the school. Prizes were distributed in order to encourage the children. The chief guest and the guests of honor addressed the children and shared information on environment and Forest which enriched their minds. As part of the activity plantations were also conducted at EMPRI.

NGC School Visits

NGC team was supposed to conduct school visits as suggested and approved by the chairman of state Steering Committee. It was thus suggested that 10 schools should be visited in each revenue district; these schools should be other than the district headquarters and should not exceed 3 in each Taluks. In order to disseminate information about NGC programme and review the activities taken up by the Eco-clubs, NGC team of EMPRI visited a total of 53 schools in 14 educational districts. The NGC team during the school visit explained the format of eco club report in detail to the incharge teachers. Also addressed the eco club members in each school visited and noted the problems faced by the teachers while conducting the eco club activities and suggested easy methodology to implement the same.