THANK YOU ...

• We thank Dr. Hayal Koksal for starting ICT Seagulls Project.
• We thank our school directors Mr. & Mrs. Olyai for their encouragement and support.
• We thank our school management especially our Principal Dr. Mrs. Alka Sharma and Head-Mistress Dr. Mrs. Shabana Rehan for guidance at all steps in this project.
• We thank our facilitator Mr. Yogesh Londhe
• We thank our Eco-Club teachers and students.
• We thank our parents & teachers for guidance.
• We thank management of Din Dayal City Mall for their support.
• We thank Pollution Control Board Regional Office, Gwalior
• We thank the media for showing interest in our initiative to create awareness about protecting the earth.
• We thank Information Officer of United Nations Information Center for sending us information leaflets and movies from UN.
• We thank Centre for Environment Education for sending us information packages of their campaign “CO2 Pick Right”.
• We thank all our friends at Little Angels for encouragement.

See and Download the Power Point Presentation of our Project at: http://www.slideshare.net/discoverabilities/ict-seagulls-project-dream-4430060

ICT Seagulls Project - DREAM

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GANTT CHART FINAL...

PROJECT OUTCOME...

1. ACCORDING TO THE FEEDBACK WE RECEIVED, WE MADE PEOPLE THINK THAT EVERYONE CAN MAKE IMPACT ON THE EARTH AND THE CLIMATE.
2. PEOPLE WERE ATTRACTED TO THE EXHIBITION BECAUSE OF THE ART AND TOOK THE MESSAGE.
3. WE REALIZED THAT DREAMS CAN BE SHARED AND ONCE SHARED, THEY CAN BECOME REALITY.
4. EVERYONE CAN BECOME EARTH ANGEL, WE JUST HAVE TO AWAKEN OUR CONSCIENCE.
5. INCREASED AWARENESS IS LIKE STARTING A REVOLUTION, THOUGHTFUL ACTION FOLLOWS VERY SOON AND BIG CHANGE IS THE NEXT STEP!
6. EVERYONE KNOWS SOMETHING IS WRONG IN THE CLIMATE, WE JUST NEED TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT POWER OF OUR INDIVIDUAL ACTION. ONCE PEOPLE KNOW THEIR ACTIONS HAVE IMPACT, PEOPLE WILL ACT!
7. IT IS FUN TO WORK TOGETHER AND FEEL THE SYNERGY!
8. OLD ,YOUTH, CHILDREN EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS IMPORTANCE OF SAVING EARTH, EVERYONE IS HAPPY TO DO SOMETHING!
9. WE REALIZED OUR OWN POTENTIAL THROUGH ARTS!
10. MEDIA WILL COVER GOOD NEWS DEFINITELY, IF IT IS PRESENTED ARTISTICALLY!

Follow Up, don't rest on the laurels!

We finished the project, but we wish to see more people using art to promote wellness of the earth.

We now have permanent exhibition of flex banners in our school corridors about saving earth.

We will create more art forms on this theme.

We will organize Earth Hour and Earth Day activities every year.

Some of the comments and feedback we wish to share...

“I am very proud, that my daughter was part of this wonderful project!”

“I can say I learned something about ‘Earth Hour’ & ‘Earth Day’ from my own students.”

“The Mall Management congratulates the students and they are welcome every time to organize such wonderful events here! Keep it up!”

“Wonderful initiative to raise awareness about environment, this exhibition did more to raise awareness than many government agencies do in a year!”

“We hope to see more schools follow this example! More students should take leadership in saving the environment!”

“It was wonderful to work on this project with my friends, we hope more students can participate in such projects in future.”

"I feel so empowered to realize even my small actions have great impact on the earth! It’s a great realization, now I feel more responsible for my actions!"

OUR GAIN!

We could put more charts here, to show replies of how many people will reuse plastic bags, how many will use cloth bags or how many will have bucket bath, and so on! They were all positive gains of course, and very important. 
Our Gain can be represented in graphs, but we feel the stories behind the number are much more important than the graphs and tables!
Most of the people we surveyed after the project also knew great deal about ‘Earth Hour’ and ‘Earth Day’, before project very few knew about them. 
Still instead of more charts and numbers, we wish to submit some responses here we got during survey after the project.

Graphs...

Above graphs show the improvement in the responses before and after the project!

The improvement can be clearly seen in the graphs! People are aware of the impact of their action on the earth! This realization has empowered them and empowered people can make a big difference to any thing they put their mind to!

Questionnaire for Survey after the Exhibition...

1. Who should combat the Climate Change?

• United Nations Organization
• Government
• Big Companies
• NGOs
• all of us

2. Do my small actions have impact on the environment? (yes / no)
3. What do you do with the polythene carry bags collected at home?

• reuse them
• recycle them
• throw them in garbage
• burn them

6. Do you switch off lights and fans when you leave a room (yes / no)
7. What is Earth Hour?

8. What is Earth Day?

9. Do you have any cloth bag at home? (yes / no)
10. What do you plan to do for ‘save the planet – save ourselves’ issue?

11. Any suggestions or feedback for us?

Analyzing the outcome of the Project...

We did a survey on 60 people after the Exhibition.

The people included students, teachers and parents chosen at random.

50 people had taken the last survey also, this gave us good picture of our success.

We recorded few of their responses also.

Analyzing the success of the EXHIBITION

Our exhibition “Earth of My Dream…” summed up most of our strategies.

 

Our Chief Guest was Director of the Pollution Control Board Regional Office, Gwalior Mr. R. K. Gupta, so we involved government agency. 

This event was covered by all the local newspapers, so we involved media also.

We reached more than 3000 people. Our dream was shared by so many people.

Our school management supported it whole-heartedly.

The Mall management was very happy to host our exhibition.

We the citizens of Gwalior pledge...

After visiting the exhibition everyone wanted to say something or pledge something, we put up a huge pledge form on a 15 feet by 7 feet banner. Anyone who felt inspired by the Exhibition wrote a pledge on this pledge form, this pledge everyone made to herself/himself.

Pledges included, “I will use cloth bag”, “I will drive less, walk more”, “I will take bucket baths”, “I will buy local fruits and vegetables” “I will switch off fans and lamps when I leave room” “I will plant trees in my garden”…

Let's gather pebbles to raise water level...

Thirsty Gwalior: This practical art attracted great interest from everyone. This exhibit depicted the story of thirsty crow adding pebbles to raise water level.

We had a glass jar half filled with water. Visitors would pick up pebbles kept there, read the message, put them in the jar and see the water level coming up. 

Some of the messages written on the pebbles were :

• Fix leaking taps  
• Plant more trees 
• close tap while brushing 
• bucket bath 
• wash car with bucket 
• water harvesting 
• tell others to save water …

Even you can become angel, you already have a mission ...

Earth Angel: This is our idea to give everyone chance to be the Earth Angel. 

It is just a cutout of cardboard, you stand behind, showing your face through the empty face of the angel and take a photo. Then there is a board showing what Earth Angel does to save mother earth.

What does Earth Angel Do?

Conserve Energy:  “switch off when leaving room ...”

Conserve Water:    “use bucket, mug. Fix leaking taps ...”  

Use Cloth Bag:        “say no to polythene bag ...”  

Recycle-Reuse-Reduce:       “as much possible, every small action counts ...” 

Be a responsible customer: “optimum use of gadgets. buy local fruits & vegetables ...”

The exhibition was our main activity to convey our dream through arts and we had worked very hard for this.

Exhibition had 4 parts:

Collage: Centerpiece of the exhibition was the huge 7 feet by 7 feet collage we had made together, depicting the earth at present and on the other hand the earth of our dream…

This collage really was the artistic expression of our dream... the DREAM we cherish for future! 

We learned: The best way to make a collage is together! This way we stick together pieces and come up with a masterpiece, which individually we can't make or even imagine!

Mother Earth Day : 22 April 2010 ...

Our exhibition “Earth of My Dream…” was a big success more than 3000 people visited the exhibition. Many of them left pledges on the banner. Everyone who visited the exhibition understood the message easily. 

The visitors were gifted duranta plants. Duranta is a decorative plant with high metabolism. This was to offset the carbon footprint of our exhibition and a token of appreciation for visiting the exhibition.

SKIT: Under the Same Sky - Animals Do Matter!

We could not present our skit in the morning special assembly on the ‘Earth Day’, as the vacations started on 19th April. So we took the skit to a Children’s class organized in a residential society. We got two students from class VI to organize it. 

All the children participating in the skit enjoyed it, all the parents who came to watch it enjoyed it and appreciated the initiative. 

Everyone liked the message to create awareness about Bio-Diversity:

We all share the same sky! Animals do matter!

We Learned: Children can come up with fantastic ways to express their thought!

You can read the script and download it at: http://www.slideshare.net/discoverabilities/under-the-same-sky-4429347

Under The Same Sky

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Save Earth - Save Ourselves

The Classroom Notice Board decoration on the theme of ‘Save Earth’ went very well. All the Notice Boards were decorated with beautiful posters or collages on the theme. We planned the Collage Competition on 20th April.
Due to sudden heat wave (Climate Change) all the schools went on vacation from 19th April; so we could not have the Collage Competition. We hope to do it in July, when school reopens.

Earth Hour...

We received this story from one of students, who enjoyed the Earth Hour!

Earth Hour ... Switch for Mother Earth!

We organized a pledge campaign for Earth Hour. It was a day of Parent Teachers Meet and many parents came to the school, many of the m visited our display and signed up for the Earth Hour.
250 families signed up for the Earth Hour. If all of them kept their promise to the Earth, then we can estimate about  1000 KVA electric appliances were switched off for 1 whole hour. That is a big saving for one campaign and we hope it offsets the Carbon Footprint of our event. 
We printed a 10 feet by 8 feet banner, it definitely has a measurable carbon footprint, but the amount of work it did was well worth it.


We learned: Beautiful posters attract attention and they are effective in conveying message!

Strategies continued: An Hour and A Day ...

Strategy 4: Organize pulse of activities from ‘Earth Hour’ to ‘Earth Day’.
We will celebrate ‘Earth Hour’ (27 March 2010) and ‘Earth Day’ (22 April 2010) in a big way, to raise awareness about what can an individual person do to save earth. We will organize activities in the school between these two dates. The program was named ‘An Hour and A Day’.
aim: To celebrate these important days for mother earth and use them to raise awareness about Mother Earth!

Planning Strategies continued...

Strategy 3.1: We used the information packages sent to us by Centre for Environment Education and United Nations Information Center. We even showed them the video ‘Under One Sky’ prepared for Animal Action Week by International Fund for Animal Welfare .
Students liked the videos and enjoyed the activities.
Each student got few stickers about how to fight Climate Change and a poster about 12 things we can do to fight Climate Change.
aim: To create awareness about the various international agencies and their work among the future leaders.

All the children liked the video ‘Under One Sky’ prepared by the IFAW and once they understood that 2010 is the year of Bio-Diversity declared by the United Nations, all the students wanted to do a SKIT o this theme. We prepared a short skit, which we planned to present in the Morning Assembly of the school on 22nd April.
aim: To awaken the creativity of the children and channel it throw arts.

Planning Strategies...

Strategy 1: To organize more activities on theme ‘Save Earth – Save Ourselves’
We discussed with our Principal Dr. Mrs. Alka Sharma about organizing a Collage Competition for students of classes V & VI on 20th April, she agreed immediately. She also suggested the theme for the notice boards to be ‘Save Earth – Save Ourselves’ for month of April.
aim: To involve young minds in a fun activity related to saving earth, this in turn will raise awareness about this important issue.

Strategy 2: Organize some event, which includes lot of artistic expression for ‘Save Earth – Save Ourselves’ campaign.  Invite representatives of Government Agencies and media to cover this event.
After much brainstorming we came up with an idea to organize an art exhibition to display the theme of our project ‘Earth of My Dream…’

aim: Display our dream through arts and raise awareness about environment and earth issues.

Strategy 3: Focus on the leaders of tomorrow and make it fun for them.

We know that if we want safe future, we need to focus on the leaders of tomorrow, (today we call them children!). We organized few activities based on this theme for the students of our school and in some neighbourhood children groups. The kids just loved these activities and learnt a lot through them.

aim: Today's children are tomorrow's leaders, empower them now!

ROOT CAUSES...

The Fishbone Diagram is a very good way to find root causes. We found root causes of 'low awareness about how to save planet earth' to be:

1. In school: the theme of 'Save Earth' is rarely used in Co-curricular activities.
2. There is very low public interest, hence media coverage is less and sponsors shy away from this issue.
3. It's not fun, so young generation is not interested in this issue.  

Why Mr. Ishikawa Why?

As Dr. Ishikawa suggested we did the FISHBONE analysis to find the root causes.

A message from future...

Do you get the message?

What did we learn?

As outcome of our research online and our interview with the teachers, we realized that when we say save planet earth, we actually are saving ourselves, or being more correct our future. The earth will continue to exist, it may not sustain life and it may be hotter or colder than now, but it will be there.
We also understood that Climate Change, Water Shortage, Disappearing Forest, Over Exploitation of Natural Resources, Disappearing Species of Animals are all inter-related.
Humans forget their unique responsibility towards planet earth and burn more carbon products than necessary, in turn Carbon Di-Oxide in the atmosphere increases, this leads to Global Warming, over period of years Climate changes, earth becomes hotter, ground water, very little of which is left, evaporates faster, creating acute shortage if life giving water in many parts, pushing people out of homes, destroying ecosystems and many animals which depend on these fragile ecosystem become extinct.
Story of Gwalior:
Gwalior is experiencing hotter summers over past few years and people are complaining of receding ground water levels, older people talk about a bird named sparrow, which used to be ubiquitous life-form all over Gwalior, now very few left, die in hundreds in the summer due to heat and lack of water, forest cover around Gwalior is receding at an alarming rate, and the trees which are disappearing are not being replaced by new ones. The situation is alarming or sometimes almost hopeless, like in case of sparrows.
Even if government passes resolutions and appoints committees, eventually it is up to us stand up make the difference.

What is at stake? Is it only sparrows? Or few trees? Or may be ground water? Or is it more than that? Is our future safe? Are our future generations safe?

What does our survey say?

Charts are effective way to represent and analyze data collected in the survey!

From these charts we understood few important things:

1. Everyone agrees something is wrong with the earth!
2. People think Fighting the Climate Change and saving the earth from destruction is job given to few organizations and common people can't do anything about it!
3. People like to visit Art Exhibitions rather than listening to lectures or reading newspaper articles!
4. People think their actions have no effect on earth! i.e. They are not aware of their own power!

Some amazing replies in the survey!

These were some replies at the survey, which we thought we must share with everyone!

"If earth becomes warmer, I will switch on my A/C and put it to lowest possible temperature."

• A student!

"What impact can small actions of one person have? This is responsibility of the Government!"

• Many adults

"Why should I change my life, if I can afford to waste electricity or water and pay for it, let me!"

• Some young people

"Yes! I will take care of the Earth!"

• A child

"Little drops of water make ocean, so our small actions put together can become a revolution."

• A student

"How to recycle a polythene carry-bag?"

• Many people

"Who reads those boring articles ‘save water’, ‘save electricity’, etc? Why do they print them?"

• Some students

"I am young I want to enjoy, not bother about saving earth or saving environment!"

• Some students

We are just collecting data at this stage, so we can't be judgmental about anyone's reply, even if it is very strange or uninformed!

Questionnaire...

We did a survey on 100 people chosen at random including students, teachers and parents.
The Questionnaire was as follows:

1. Is Climate Change a real challenge for all of us? (yes / no)
2. Who should combat the Climate Change?

• United Nations Organization
• Government
• Big Companies
• NGOs
• all of us

3. Do you read articles about sustainable environment or saving water in newspapers? (yes / no)
4. What do you do with the polythene carry bags collected at home?
reuse them
recycle them
throw them in garbage
burn them
5. Can our small actions have any impact on environment? (yes / no)
6. Number following activities according to the preference you like to do them ( 1-very much and then reducing onwards...)

• to music
• a scientific article
• an art exhibition
• to academic lecture
• or debate about climate change

DEMING WHEEL / P-D-C-A CYCLE

The Vehicle to success as defined by the Great Dr. Deming says Plan - Do - Check -Act.

Activity Plan Matrix, nothing to with Neo & Trinity!

Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How?
We have plan, we have manpower, we have time, we know places and we have know how. Now it is time to put it in action through the MATRIX. Activity Plan Matrix leaves nothing to chance, everything is planned like a clockwork, easy to execute and easier to see results.

GANTT CHART IN BEGINNING...

Save Earth or Save ourselves?

“What do you think of this motto save the planet?" to this question the author of Alchemist Paulo Coelho says:
"… its quite cynical because, at the end of the day, if we don’t take care of the planet it will destroy us. But we put ourselves in a position that we are saving something and this may be good for our ego but it is ultimately unrealistic. If we don’t care of the planet, we will be destroyed not the planet.”

Paulo Coelho’s blog

So we stand corrected by great author! Now we discussed this and changed the project title to: “earth of my dream…”
we all have a dream of beautiful living earth, nurturing life and promoting growth, generations after generations of mankind, animals, trees and all life forms living together in harmony…

Mapping our Mind

What to do with our dream? How to convey the dream to others? What important points should we include? We mapped our dream using Mind-Map.

5. One More Video from UNDP India:

"Climate Change: Every Action Counts: Move to Mitigate, Act to Adapt"

http://data.undp.org.in/video/Every_Action_Counts.wmv

More videos ...

Some more videos that impressed us

3. Water Talks by Solidarity International on World Water Day:

Solidarités International: Water talks from La Boite Concept on Vimeo.

4. "Under One Sky" by IFAW for Animal Action Week 2009

Some videos that made impression on us!

We did research on INTERNET to get ideas about how to use art to give message. We got lot of information, we are including some of the videos that made impression on us.

1. Story of Stuff:

2. Declan Galbraith - "Tell me Why"

Pareto Analysis

Solve the Vital Few and you'll take care of even the Important Many.
We did Pareto Analysis of the Votes received. This is what we got.

Democracy in Action..

After shortlisting the Messages we wish to convey through arts, we took votes from 100 students, to understand their choice.Each student chose only one among the choices given below.

1. Save water
2. Save environment
3. Save Mother Earth
4. Save Girl Child
5. Climate Change
6. Plant Trees
7. Discover Abilities of Disabled People
8. Educate Girls

The votes were then put in a table to be processed through Pareto Analysis.

What our school stands for!?

Let us declare first of all that we are very proud to be studying at Little Angels High School, Gwalior.

Why? Is it only because we study here? All the schools teach subjects and get trophies in various competitions and all the schools follow some philosophy, but we are proud for everything that our school stands for. Apart from excellence in Academics shown by our students (of course mentored by school management and teachers), our school champions many causes like tree plantation, 'Save Water' cause, cause of Girl Child, cause of Universal Peace, cause of Global Warming, cause of Bio-Diversity, cause of Differently Abled People, cause of Climate Change, cause of Save Earth. 

It is not only in words that our school follows these, our actions speak louder than words. We  celebrate National Girl Child Day every year, we organize many tree plantation campaigns, we have solar lights on the campus, we have one of the biggest functional Water Harvesting system in our school, we get opportunities to work with differently abled people, we organize Model United Nations to discuss Climate Change, our students make beautiful posters and collages on all these issues, our students edit newspapers to raise these topics, the list is endless. We are proud for everything that our school stands for!

What message do we want to convey through arts?

We stormed our brains again and came up with this list:

Save water
Climate Change
Plant Trees
Educate Girls
Save Girl Child
Discover Abilities of Disabled People
Save environment
Save Mother Earth

Thing of beauty is joy forever!

We looked around our school and realized once again how beautiful our school is.Our directors have a great aesthetic sense. We have a lovely lush green lawn decorated with beautiful terracotta figures; we have beautiful garden full of lovely flowers; our classrooms are decorated with nice educational charts, collages, posters, etc.; our corridors are full of flower pots, beautiful posters and walls painted with bright colours and beautiful quotations are written in expert calligraphic writing.

We have Arts classes, Music classes, Dance classes where students learn to express their most inner thoughts in art-form that is natural to them. We are encouraged to perform skits and songs in morning assembly, thus eve our morning assemblies are full of arts.

So we realized that there is no challenge for ARTS in our school, art in every form is not only encouraged but also nurtured.

So, building upon this strong foundation of arts we wish to use arts for conveying some message, which our school stands for!