my planet

Green footprint

Walk to school and Save the Earth. Here’s how. It’s a known fact, that cars are widely blamed for adding to the problem of global warming. So 10,000 children from Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, Sweden and Turkey have taken to walking or biking to school instead of driving, to cut down on the use of cars. Aged between four and 10 years, they have cut out the shape of their foot on pieces of paper, called the Green Footprint, for every journey they have made and handed over a total of 599,142 Green Footprints to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Nairobi, as their contribution to save the world’s climate. The challenge was to gather at least 178,969 footprints, which equals the number of kilometres needed to travel through the 189 countries which have ratified the UNFCCC to date.

good deed

Thumbs up

Stand up for your rights. That’s just what fourteen year-old Om Prakash Gurjar from Rajasthan, who won the International Children’s Peace Award, did. He’s the first Indian to bag the award. Gurjar was a child labourer who sprayed pesticides in farms. Rescued by a welfare organisation, he continued his studies and later, backed by the state human rights commission, went to court against a school which was misutilising funds meant for children. He won the case and the award.