Green Brigade helps provide tools for education

The Green Brigade is a group based in UAE to enhance our awareness, protect our environment and add value to society. At Green Brigade, we always think that any small initiative has a potential to cross barriers and will be instrumental in creating a positive environment. Recently, we came across one such initiative by an individual in UAE, Mr Venkat, popularly known in the community as ‘The Pencilman of UAE’.

Pencils, erasers, rulers, crayons, unused blank sheets of paper, toys and other such items are normally available in households in excess and we do not pay much attention to them. After sometime, we start using new ones and the used items go to waste and eventually to the landfill.

At the same time, there are many children in the world who are really struggling to get these items to continue their education. Mr Venkat collects these used materials from various schools and individuals in UAE and distributes them to the needy and poor children in India through various non-governmental organisations (NGOs). “Shikshayatan” in Thiruvaroor district, Tamil Nadu, India and other NGOs distribute pencils on behalf of www.education4all.info in the district schools to over 4,000 children every term.

To promote his wonderful initiative, we, the Green Brigade, had taken the initiative recently to collect these used/excess materials from various households. Our members had conducted a door-to-door campaign to share this initiative with our neighbours. We finally collected a huge amount of pencils, school bags, books and note books which will be useful to many underprivileged children in India.

Eventually, we sat down to pack all the stationery collected, separating them by category. We then packed them and decorated the cartons with Green Brigade logos. We were surprised to see how many re-usable materials we had collected that would have otherwise just gone to the landfill. The next day, Green Brigade handed over these seven cartons of materials to Mr Venkat for onward dispatch to India.

If anybody wishes to join us in future initiatives, please contact us at unmeshdatta@yahoo.co.in or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/groups/371497349573555/

The reader is a student based in Sharjah.

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