Guwahati: City – based Maria’s Public School (MPS) has been designated as National Coordinator School for the Green Schools Alliance (GSA), an international coalition of sustainable schools, created in 2007 by schools for schools.
The GSA has grown into a strength of 7,800 public and private schools in 41 US states and 53 countries representing over five million students. MPS will serve as a mentor to new member schools in India – rural and urban – host regional sustainable school events and assist GSA in developing international student and educator training programmes. The collaboration will create the long-term infrastructure needed to support a GSA India Chapter.
MPS founder and managing trustee Nellie Ahmed Tanweer assisted GSA in creating the partnership framework for what a national coordinator school would do, creating a system for GSA to recruit national coordinator schools in other countries, Assam Tribune reported.
The idea for this partnership was sparked when MPS creative director and teacher of design Biswajit De and students Violina Das and Siddhant Agarwala attended the GSA’s Student Climate Change & Conservation Congress (SC3) in West Virginia, USA in 2015, according to a press release.
The partnership between MPS and GSA takes the next step in uniting the global sustainable school movement.
The designation of a national coordinator school in India marks the first partnership of its kind for GSA outside of the United States.
“GSA’s vision has always been to effect change at the national and global scale. When schools come together to create a global green school community and connect across generations, socio-economics and geopolitics, we can make giant leaps of progress from many small steps,” according to Margaret Watson, founder and president of the GSA. “The leadership that Maria’s Public School has shown in becoming our first National Coordinator School is impressive,” she added.