Month: March 2020

With COVID19, the ICT Center classes and operations in our sites in India, Rwanda, Uganda and Myanmar have come to a temporary slow down.

We continue to keep the communication channel with our trainees open, however, given site specifications and limitations, communication can be challenging.

Before the ICT Center classes closed for COVID19 measures, the ICT Center Managers in each site shared COVID19 knowledge with trainees and youth.

Thank you to Srinivas, Navatha, Munmun, John for getting the information out!

Here are some 1-line responses we received from our trainees, collected through WhatsApp text message, voice message, pictures of written pieces– we get creative when we have to communicate during isolation and quarantine!

IN JUST A FEW WORDS, WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF COVID19?

*Cough, fever and tiredness.

*Dry cough, headache, and fever.

*Cough, fever and headache.

*Fever, chest pain, chills, rapid heartbeat, breathing difficulties, Pneumonia, and kidney failure.

*Cough, fever, rapid heartbeat

 

IN JUST 1 SENTENCE, WHAT ARE SOME THINGS WE CAN DO TO STOP THE SPREAD?

*Stay at home, use mask and sanitize frequently.

*Sanitize, hand wash.

*Do not panic and if anybody visits your home from outside first tell them to hand wash and use sanitize.

*Follow all the safety rules and regulations directed by the government because your safety is in your hands.

*If you buy anything from outside first wash or clean it with lukewarm water before using it.(–> please use soap and sanitizer or disinfectants!)

*COVID19 is a virus whose medicine has not been discovered so please stay at home and follow safety rules and support the Indian government in this mission.

*Hand wash, use a mask, and take steam along with gurgle by adding salt and turmeric. (–> we haven’t found research on salt and tumeric gargle on COVID19, but hygiene practices are indeed important)

 

We also received questions from our trainees, from which we will plan a video session to address the questions. Be on the look out for the session schedule via https://www.edforsd.org/spring-2020-schedule

One of our trainees, Sindhu from Mahabubnagar wrote a piece on COVID19:

 

 

Please take a look at this fantastic study and post by one of our most active Eco Ambassadors, Aalok Bhatt.

 

BY AALOK BHATT

My name is Aalok Bhatt and I am a sophomore in Millburn High School, New Jersey, and an Eco Ambassador for the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) at Earth Institute, Columbia University and SDSN program.

Miss. Priya Patel of the Millburn Green Team, asked me and another student to create a survey in order to get more information about the plastic consumption habits of students in our school.

The survey got a good response as 1082 students participated in it, which is over ⅔ of the student body. To get such a high number of respondents, I had to put in a lot of effort to get the word out.

The first thing I did was to speak to all the class presidents to send out the survey. Unfortunately, I did not get enough responses so I decided to speak to the principal of MHS, Dr Miron, requesting him to send out the survey in a school wide email.

He did so and even reminded students to fill out the survey on the loudspeaker 2 times!

While analyzing the results of the survey, I saw that 57.9% of respondents never bring reusable cutlery to school. I was shocked when I saw this statistic and realised that a lot of work needs to be done in terms of convincing students to bring their own cutlery, and persuade the school to provide less or no plastic cutlery.

In order to achieve this, I, along with members of the High School Environmental team, plan to speak to Dr Burton (the superintendent of Millburn Public Schools), and Mrs Schnider (who handles the school’s finances) to lobby for reduced disposable cutlery in our school.

 

On a positive note, most of the results leaned to the environmentally friendly side, which gives me hope that we will be able to combat this problem in an expeditious manner.

 

Click here to see my findings!

 

Eco Ambassadors