Aarushi Tanwar - Champion - Social Volunteer Awards 2020
I am an environmentalist & climate change educator. Also, the Co-Founder of volunteer - citizen network 'Green Gang Faridabad' which working in the sector of waste management. I have been a panellist for 'Youth Perspective for India's Environment' - a web dialogue organized by CHINAR & Global Foundation. And a member of IUCN Commission on Environment & Communication and a United Nation's V - Force Volunteer. I have written several articles for Let Me Breathe India and have developed informative videos on the issue of air pollution & eco-anxiety. I have worked on diverse projects with UNEP, Clean Air Asia, WWF and Purpose PBC in the sector of environment & social development. And the projects dealt with school kids, college students and residential communities on environment education, air pollution and solar energy respectively.
VOLUNTEERING STORY
My volunteering career started with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Delhi, India; where I worked in environment education department on a project to assess Delhi NCR based schools' curriculum as per that of WWF's environment education programme - Ek Prithvi. It was very intriguing to be visiting number of schools, interacting with kids on how to do vermi-composting, tree tagging,conducting eco - trails and environment surveys etc. As well as, it included a segment of 'training the trainers', where school teachers were built capacity on several themes of environment in order to imbibe the elements of environment education in their respective subjects. Later as a United Nation's V- Force, I volunteered for the India Volunteering Conclave, a two day event organized by UN Volunteers (UNV) & Ministry of Youth Affairs & Sports in New Delhi, India. I was selected among the other 15 volunteers from India by UNV to coordinate India Volunteering Conclave 2019 on 8th- 9th August 2019. I was assigned the duty of managing and coordinating with guests. And to help in facilitating the discussion session. Currently, I'm managing an independent volunteer - citizen network called Green Gang Faridabad with a core team of 10 young environmentalists, 100 citizens and 7 stakeholders & supporters working on a mission to make the city & communities of Faridabad clean, green & sustainable. The network works in the sector of waste management by conducting extensive weekend clean up drives in different locations of Faridabad. The team segregates waste at the time of collection in order to be fed to the recycling company and to divert the route of waste from landfills to the recycled product. The aim of such activity is to make actions speak louder than words i.e. we want to make Faridabad win the first position in the Swachh Survekshan Survey 2021 by the active citizen participation and sheer stakeholder engagement in the sector of waste.
VOLUNTEERING JOURNEY
It's been total of six months of volunteering to be counted from year 2019 to the present. I've always been very passionate about doing some action at the grass root level, connecting with different set of audience with difference in age groups and that has always been my inspiration to know more about work on the ground than in literature.
VOLUNTEERING FOR ME
Volunteering is an act of giving back to society in different individual capacities. The volunteers act as catalysts in implementation of the development programs which have been initiated by organizations & governments. According to me, volunteering helps elevate the process of connecting with different communities on a very human level in order to bring greater impact in the society and a sense of individual responsibility with respect to the society.
PROJECT
Green Gang Faridabad
ORGANISATION