A day for nature

HYDERABAD: In a tribute to nature and its conservation, students of St. Francis college occupied themselves in green activities ranging from junk art, paper bag making, a Tee-shirt logo and caption designing contest, an environment quiz, and a photography competition. Through the week, the Prakriti club and volunteers involved themselves in activities like a rally called Greenathon, where about 60 student representatives and volunteers of the Prakriti club walked from Lifestyle to their campus in Kundanbagh, shouting out slogans and holding up placards that attempted to draw attention to the pressing need of being more ecoconscious.The principal of the college, Dr Sr Alphonsa Vattoly, and vice principal, Dr Sr Christine Fernandes, joined the students in the last leg of the walk. Says Aishwarya Muralidhar, a final year student who was part of the organising committee, “Generally Prakriti Day is scheduled to coincide with the World Environmental Day that happens on June 5. But this (academic) year, due to the Telangana agitations we weren’t able to do so.Yet we didn’t want to leave college without marking the day, so we did it now.” The day was also marked by a cultural programme which was graced by P Raghuveer, an IFS officer who is additional principal chief conservator of forests and is also the director of the Andhra Pradesh Forest Academy (APFA) in Dullapally.Addressing the girls he amused the students with anecdotes and incidents from his own experiences, all the while stressing on the fact that there were people who were trying to make a difference, and that as students should strive to do so too. Keeping with the theme of conserving nature, the backdrop of the event was made completely of scrap paper from newspapers and magazines while prizes for the competitions and mementos for the dignitaries were made by a final year student, Danika Tavora, who fashioned bottle caskets into fancy lamps. The week ended with students enthusiastically signing up for the Highway Cleanup Project being conducted by the Forest Department on Saturday.