School Nursery Yojana: Salient Features

School Nursery Yojana: Salient Features

Question: School Nursery Yojana has recently been launched by MoEF. Examine the salient features of this scheme.

- The School Nursery Yojana aims to bring students closer to nature and inculcate urgency in them for initiating activities to promote environmental conservation

- School Nursery Yojana involves children in raising saplings in nurseries created within their school campuses

- Around 10,000 schools will be covered across the country as per the scheme in the next 3 years

- Selected schools will receive grant of INR 25,000 within the first year and INR 10,000 per year for the coming two years

- As per this scheme, students will sow seeds and grow saplings in the school nursery for their practical exercise for biology classes or extra curricular activities

- Students will carry out tree census in their school and locality as per this Yojana

- 1000 schools will be covered under this scheme within one year of its launch

- It will grow to cover 5,000 schools next year and close to 10,000 schools after that

- School Nursery Yojana will also enable schools for distributing saplings to students for planting in their homes and surrounding areas

- The focus of the scheme is to create young green warriors

- Via this Yojana, ministry will create an army of young green warriors

- Ministry will support schools for providing facilities for raising saplings for use in schools and by students

About School Nursery

- A school nursery will be within a small space of a minimum of 100 square meter for making beds for raising saplings and for activities pertaining to nursery related activities

- This includes preparing, planting a mixture of good earth, soil and manure, filling of earthen pots and storage of seeds

- Every school nursery will create around 1000 saplings each year

School will be given encouragement to take up the following activities :

i. Composting
ii. Rain water harvesting
iii. Water recycling

Facts and Stats

- More than 60 participating schools and 2500 students have received saplings of their choice from a wide range of species as part of this scheme

- Medicinal plants that were distributed include ‘Neem’, ‘Jamun’, ‘Amaltas’, ‘Kachnar’, ‘Bahera’, ‘Amla’ and ‘Begonia’.

- Herbal plants distributed in India include ‘Tulsi’, ‘Lemon Grass’, ‘Giloi’, ‘Ashwagandha’, ‘Haldi’ and ‘Ilaichi’.

- Packets of the seeds were given to students including ‘Kachnar’, ‘Papdi’, ‘Kaner’, ‘Neem’ and ‘Begonia’.

- Close to 5000 saplings were distributed to school students and nearby residents