“The spirit of service is the heart of humanity.”– Lailah Gifty Akita
 
All students of Grades VI to XII do 12 hours of Community Service for a cause that they choose, and they are required to put in consistent efforts. The school helps them coordinate with the institutes they want to volunteer for, and involve the parents in supervision of the same.

1. Cleaning the area in front of the school.:

On 23rd of April 2022, the students, teachers and all the staff of the Kalyani School engaged in cleaning the area in front of the school. The nallaa that runs there has troubled everyone for a long time, because local people have been heedlessly dumping plastic material and household garbage, including glass and metal into it. The area had become infested with harmful insects and emitted a bad odour. So, despite Saturday being a weekend, the Kalyaniites took it upon themselves to do the needful and clean the area.

With the help of the workers of an NGO, they tried to clean the area as best as they could. At the end of the drive, the place looked much cleaner, and would perhaps inspire the local people to keep it that way. The effort of the Kalyaniites was commendable and the students especially felt a sense of accomplishment after doing it. The school is proud of all the participants.

2. Making students aware of social-cultural realities: 

• Bharat Yatra by Shri Kailash Satyarthi against child abuse: In 2017, The Kalyani school hosted Nobel Laureate, Shri Kailash Satyarthi’s team and our students participated in a march. They also sought to spread awareness through a street play, posters and songs.

3. The river cleanup and plantation drive in Kharadi:

The Kalyaniites do it all. Along with their studies, they are quite determined to do something meaningful, to make this world a healthy place to live in. They know the raging environmental concerns, and that it is everyone’s responsibility to make sure that the health and beauty of Mother Earth is restored and maintained. Keeping that in mind, on 26th of November 2022, our children of Grades VI-XII, participated in the river cleanup and plantation drive in Kharadi; and also took out a rally in the nearby areas, to raise awareness amongst the people about the importance of keeping our water bodies clean. They collected plastic, metal and garbage in separate bags. The teachers, parents, students and Management were highly appreciated for their initiatives, by the governing bodies of the city. The Kalyaniites have pledged to keep such efforts going, until they make a positive difference.

4. Measures taken by school to ensure sustainability of each project year on year:

We are extremely conscious of our responsibilities towards our surroundings. This has led us into initiating and sustaining environment or eco-friendly projects and products, as an institution, as well as inculcating the same values in our students. Some of our projects aligning with the same are as follows:

• Composting: We collect wet garbage from our cafeteria and classrooms. This is then used for making compost. Our gardens and lawn use the final product as organic manure.
• Digitisation: Most of our processes and documentation are digitised, so as to avoid wastage of paper. We try our best to keep paper usage to the bare minimum by encouraging our students and staff to recycle and reuse.
• Water Harvesting: We understand the need and necessity to conserve water and hence we have introduced water harvesting as a part of our Environmental Education curriculum. Our students have designed projects based on the same and understand the working of these projects. Our assemblies are also around these topics, which further help our students to learn and understand the importance of saving water, through various means.
• Festivals and other celebrations: Our enthusiastic parents are our largest pool of resources. Very often they conduct workshops for our students teaching them to make colour pigments out of coconut husk, dry leaves and flowers. Our curriculum also ensures that our students are taught to make eco-friendly Ganesha idols, rakhis, crackers and decorative buntings. This enables us to celebrate festivals responsibly.
• Earn For Your Country: To encourage our students to value dignity of labour, we have introduced ‘Earn For Your Country’ – a money box project. Our students collect the money that they get as a reward for doing odd jobs or chores, from their parents or neighbours. The money collected is accumulated in the school, at the end of the academic year. This is then used by the school, to rebuild or improve a municipality school in the neighbourhood