Building green minds: Mongrace Montessori House's LitFest for the young

Baba Dioum, a Senegalese engineer and a renowned forest scientist, once said, "In the end, we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."

- ROUSHAN CHATTERJEE

Today, the world is going through a very alarming situation where rising temperatures are setting new records and environmental hazards have become more common than ever. With each passing year, deforestation is becoming a major threat to our ecosystem. To add to the problems, people are reluctant about this worsening climate emergency.

It is for this reason that institutions like Mongrace Montessori House, a Montessori school at Short Street, Camac Street, Kolkata, came up with an innovative idea to organize a programme aimed at teaching children the values of environmental responsibility.

Every year, Mongrace Montessori House annually celebrates 'Lit Fest' where children are encouraged to make and create their own book based on the subject or topic they like. However, this year a new theme, 'Green Gallery' was introduced to shift the focus on environmental needs and concerns.

Speaking about the intention behind this theme, Sanjana Vakharia, principal of Mongrace Montessori House, stated, "With the deteriorating global condition and complete ecological collapse, we started thinking—what can we do at Mongrace to combat this planetary degradation?" Her objective became clear: foster environmental consciousness at an early age to help children develop a sense of ownership and responsibility towards creating a greener world.