EcoSikh Volunteers Sharing Environment Values at Farmers Fest

Sept 22-23, Ludhiana: Student volunteers carried environmental messages on their shoulders and picked up paper trash at the annual Kisan Mela (Farmers festival) held at Agricultural University. The wonderful messages included, “Dharat Suhavee hai kurre-dan nahi, kurra kurre-dan vich hi sutiye”, which means, this is a blissful Earth not a dustbin. One must always use dustbins to throw litter. “Saaf suthra aala duala ! Jeevan kare sukhala!”, which means, clean and tidy surroundings makes life happy. “Ik rukh: lagaa ke, paal ke, sambhaal ke, vekho taan sahi kina anand aunda hai”, which means, give it a try and discover the happiness of planting, nurturing and caring just one tree.

Approximately 80,000 farmers from Punjab, Haryana and other adjoining states visit this famous festival every year. These volunteer student groups used various other techniques like flash mob, print cards and dialogues with farmers for awareness regarding the use of dustbins, planting trees, reading good books and other positive messages.
EcoSikh Project Manager, Ravneet Singh appreciated this effort and said, “Farmers Fest is the one best opportunity for mass awareness and we are hopeful that our farmer community would take a lot of benefit from this student volunteers. This was our first take at kisan mela and we look forward to make it bigger and better next time.”
Check this interview with the EcoSikh volunteer team head Alka from College of Agriculture, here.
EcoSikh organized this activity in collaboration with a religious organization called Sukrit which has partnered with EcoSikh in the past Sikh Environment Day in approaching various schools in Punjab for Eco-Assembly on March14. EcoSikh and Sukrit are planning more youth environment activities in the coming months.