The Canopy OUR SUSTAINABILITY EDUCATION STORIES
10
Years of Stewardship in Sustainability Education
Inaugural Vol. 1, Issue Issue 2, June | Vol. 2021 2, Issue 1, November 2020 Photo: SEN workshop 2018
THE CANOPY
What's New in
2021
Dispatches from the Field
Special Focus Continuous Engagement Program - Colleges
Wipro earthian Sustainability Quiz
Adapting to Change In the school competition, we encourage students and educators to reflect on the pandemic within their local contexts. Through this, we hope to provide the opportunity and space for reflection, introspection, and inquiry, with a focus on individual and community issues through the lens of the pandemic.
To adapt to the limitations faced by teachers and students to undertake the activities in our school program, we have developed self-paced e- learning modules on the themes of Water, Waste and Biodiversity.
2020 Awards Highlights The Wipro earthian 2020 Annual Awards event was held virtually, with all the fanfare and excitement of a physical ceremony. It was carried live with participation from the winning and shortlisted school and college teams, our speakers, Wipro representatives, Wipro employees, and the program partners. The winning teams were felicitated by Rishad Premji, Chairman, Wipro Ltd, and Anurag Behar, Chief Sustainability Officer, Wipro Limited. In the 2020 competition, we had 20 winning entries and 17 shortlisted entries from schools, and 8 winning entries from colleges. One of the main highlights of the program was the interactive Q&A session between Rishad, Anurag, and the audience.
Key Speaker David Quammen, a world-renowned author and journalist, talked about his research and insights on how we have broken down the buffers between us and the natural world, understanding the workings of a pandemic, and where and how we can course correct. The event had Jadav "Molai" Payeng, ‘Forest Man of India,’ who shared his journey through a recorded interview. One of India's youngest climate activists, Licypriya Kangujam, also shared her message with the students on her journey as an activist. The day concluded with the 2020 National Finals of the Wipro earthian Sustainability Quiz, hosted by noted quizmaster Lloyd Saldana.
More than 70 teacher training workshops across 29 states are now being conducted online.
Capacity building workshops for educators on themes of nature-based learning, citizen science, barefoot ecology, and partner principles have been hosted virtually.
All our college sustainability internships hosted by partner organizations are being completed remotely.
In keeping with the overall shift to ease of access and digital learning, we are also curating all our learning materials on a learning management platform that all stakeholders can freely access.
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THE CANOPY
What's New in
2021
• The Wipro earthian 2021 competition will be launched in June 2021. • With the ongoing pandemic, this year's teacher training workshops have been moved online across all locations. • E-learning modules on Water, Biodiversity, and Waste will play an essential role during the online workshops. • We are bringing more capacity-building programs for our Sustainability Educators with our partners.
Special Focus The Wipro Sustainability Educator Program aims to create the most broad-based and effective Sustainability Educator Network in the country through a process of deeply engaged stewarding of Sustainability Education in schools and local communities through long-term, on-ground engagement. This year, we welcome one new organization and three new educators as a part of our third cohort. We now have 11 educators representing 9 organizations. Our educators represent Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Ladakh, Maharashtra, Kerala, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, and Assam. Here is the list of organizations represented by our educators:
• The current college competition model will be discontinued this year. We are in the process of developing a new and relevant format.
Watch all our E-learning modules here
Dispatches from the Field Our Sustainability Educators conducted workshops with topics ranging from nature-based learning to sustainability practices. These workshops were conducted both online and on the field where possible. Snapshots from the workshops below:
Capacity Building for the Educators We have curated a calendar of domain-specific workshops that focus on specific areas like facilitation and training skills, enhancing domain knowledge, stakeholder engagement, etc. Our most recent capacity building workshop on Nature Classrooms, was hosted and curated by NCF. In this 3 part workshop, partiipants discussed on how to work closely with the school ecosystem and other stakeholders to develop local and culturally relevant nature learning resources that enrich and support the existing Environmental Studies curricula.
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We will continue to curate multiple capacity building opportunities for organisations and educators enrolled in this program, in the months to come.
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THE CANOPY
Continuous Engagement Program - Colleges Sustainability Internship Support Program Over the past 7 years, we have offered a diverse and unique range of sustainability internships to college students in our network. It is an opportunity to engage with relevant paradigms, schools of thought, and innovations in the sustainability arena. These internships are undertaken for 2 months, and are offered through our ecosystem of expert partner organizations that include CSTEP, WRI, BIOME, CDP, TRUCOST, and CHINAR, amongst others. Internships range from thematic areas such as rainwater harvesting, natural capital accounting, biodiversity studies, environmental policy and governance, green building, aquifer mapping, renewable energy integration, and climate modelling. Since the launch of the internship program, 92 students have completed internships with our partner organizations. In 2021, 18 students kick-started their summer sustainability internships with our partners.
Development of Academic Literature Our role as a facilitator in the development and production of various multi-disciplinary knowledge assets relevant to sustainability in higher education continues. This includes handbooks on pedagogic practices, case study development, compendiums of best practices, teaching guidelines, and consultative faculty workshops.
IIM Ahmedabad: We have collaborated with IIM Ahmedabad to develop and publish a Sustainability Case Study compendium to be used by B-schools across India for disseminating industry best practices in sustainability, as well as for promoting classroom learning. This compendium will be launched by SAGE after an academic peer-review process.
CEPT University: We have embarked on academic collaboration with CEPT University to develop a first-of-its-kind compendium of sustainability case studies, as an academic tool for the urban planning discipline, to be used to reference classroom learning in planning schools. The final design and publication process at CEPT University Press began in March 2021. We hope to see the project come to fruition in the next few months, followed by an official book launch. IIT Bombay: The Chemical Engineering discipline is in a unique position to impact decisions that the industry makes while developing new paradigms, strategies, and products for long term sustainability. Foundational understanding of sustainability linkages to chemical processes and perspective building are key components in a student’s journeys of learning. In keeping with our larger goal of facilitating the integration of sustainability concepts in higher education, we have started initial discussions with IIT Bombay to curate a teaching manual for all core chemical engineering courses. This manual would allow be a ready to use resource for faculty to identify and map critical sustainability concepts to the existing curriculum.
Wipro earthian Sustainability Quiz The Wipro earthian Sustainability Quiz for colleges was launched in 2015. This is the only college quiz in the country dedicated to sustainability and increasing the basic knowledge quotient and enthusiasm in understanding sustainability. The quiz questions are curated from a wide range of topics under the broad umbrella of sustainability, and include, renewable energy sources, solid waste management, urban mobility, green tech, green building and architecture, water management, and the latest trends in sustainability, etc. Over the last 6 years, this quiz has been launched in many of the top colleges in India, including, IITs, IIMs, NITs, and BITS. We have seen unprecedented participation levels with 62 quizzes, 8600 teams, and 12400 students from these institutions.
The 2020 edition of the quiz was conducted virtually for the first time. The top 4 positions went to participants from Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, IIT Bombay, IIIT Bangalore, School of Business Management, NMIMS Mumbai, and Harcourt Butler Technical University.
Interesting Reads Are Indian business schools taking sustainability seriously?
Click here
Sundarlal bahuguna: a himalayan voice for ecological truth and social justice
Click here
Commentary: Sustainability cannot just be taught in geography lessons
Click here
Water in age of climate change
Click here
Upcoming Events • Launch of the 11th edition of the Wipro earthian 2021 Sustainability Awards Program. • Launch of the 2021 Wipro earthian Sustainability Quiz.
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Wipro Foundation Doddakannelli, Sarjapur Road, Bangalore-560 035, India Tel: +91 (80) 2844 0011 Fax: +91 (80) 2844 0256 wipro.com For more information, please write to us at earthian.contact@wipro.com
Curated by Wipro Sustainability education team Cover Photo by Nathan Dumlao from Unsplash.
IND/BRD/JUN2021-MAY2022