Children all over India took part in a Children’s Earth Summit in April in preparation for the larger event taking place in Johannesburg at the end of August. Organised by Navdanya, a non-governmental organisation involved in ecological and environmental conservation the Summit helped children to learn about the environment in their local community and encouraged them to think of ideas to improve their region. .

Children celebrated the environment by expressing their ideas in creative ways. Competition entries included many fabulous posters. Skits, poems, dance and even a heal the world’ board game, The winners won places to the Navdanya Eco Camp in Dehra Dun in May. Sixtyfive youth leaders aged 10–16 came from Bijaks Eco-Clubs in seven different states to camp together for a week at Navdanya’s rural sustain-ability campus in Dehra Dun, Bija Vidyapeeth.

Leading environmental visionaries, Vandana Shiva and Mandla Mentoor, interacted with and inspired the children to help them understand environmental challenges and have fun doing in doing so. They spoke about the many possible paths the future holds and showed the children that they have the power to determine the way ahead.

Children learnt about organic agriculture through hands-on ex-perience from sowing seeds to preserving them for future prop-agation. They created campaign posters to promote awareness. They defined a world they would like to see and came up with personal solutions that each of them was willing to commit to. They will also be sending out action forms to the Indian government asking for these solutions to be implemented at government level to provide a clean, happy future.
At the end of the camp the children chose ten youth ambassadors to represent them at the International Children’s Earth Summit in Johannesburg in August, coinciding with the UN Summit on Sustainable Development. These child-ren will be voicing their concerns and hopes to world leaders.

Bijaks Eco-Clubs are growing in schools across India. Bijak is a Hindi word that means seed carrier and the Eco-Clubs are sowing seeds of environmental awareness. Bijaks is a way for children who care to get together to take action by improving the environment in their own backyards. Future projects include planting trees, conserving water and learning about nature.
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