Wipro earthian has completed a landmark 11 years in the space of Sustainability Education. It is one of India’s largest programs of its kind for schools and colleges and is designed to act as a catalyst for fostering excellence in sustainability thinking and action. This program is a natural intersection of Wipro’s commitment to the key domains of education and ecology.
Our long experience with education, and more recently with ecology, has helped us realize that many of the problems of sustainable development are a result of our inadequate and inappropriate education system – what is ‘learnt’, what is ‘not learnt’, what is ‘paid attention to’ and what is ‘ignored’. This led us to start ‘Wipro earthian’, a long-term intervention that seeks to make sustainability axiomatic to education.
Our programmatic interventions in schools aim at providing exposure to multiple perspectives, within school campuses, faculty and student peer groups, and the larger community around them.
New Guwahati Adarsha High School, Guwahati, Assam
Our higher education interventions are a blend of high intensity scaled approaches and slow deliberative engagements, each serving their own specific purposes. The understanding of linkages between sustainability and the college ecosystem is still in its nacency and needs sustained research, engagement and experimentation with ideas. The higher education space is a fountainhead of ideas and innovation and our approach is to work with institutions, faculty and students to move the needle on integrating sustainability as a cross cutting theme and critical element of learning engagement and experimentation with ideas. The higher education space is a fountainhead of ideas and innovation and our approach is to work with institutions, faculty and students to move the needle on integrating sustainability as a cross cutting theme and critical element of learning
The Wipro earthian annual award event is a culmination of 5 months of passion, rigor and application put in by thousands of schools, colleges, students and faculty in the Wipro earthian family. Of the thousands that participate each year, 20 schools and 10 college teams are selected through a rigorous regional shortlisting process and by a national jury consisting of eminent members with varied experiences in academia, research and civic action. The selected teams are brought to Bangalore to attend the marquee annual award event ceremony and program, which is Wipro’s small way of celebrating their achievement and passion
Our partner ecosystem, which includes outreach organizations, academic institutions, and domain experts, have made invaluable contributions making Wipro earthian a one-of-a-kind program in sustainability education and have been instrumental in our success in charting this path. Our school program partners include the Center for Environment Education (CEE), C.P.R. Environmental Education Centre (CPREEC), Wild Ecologues, and organizations in our Sustainability Educator Network. They have collectively reached out to thousands of schools, conducted hundreds of teacher training programs, and have been crucial in evangelizing the program across India. Their involvement has helped us connect to a diverse range of rural and urban schools across the country.
