Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Rajkumar M’s efforts in the Kohima district of Nagaland, for creating awareness regarding environment, is catching widespread national attention. An initiative named ‘Project Future’, launched by him on 5 June 2020, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Skoch National Level Award.
The 2014 batch IFS officer has yet again come up with another impactful initiative called ‘Project Green Box’ which he thinks can be replicated in the whole country. ‘Project Green Box’ is a subset of ‘Project Future’ but has the capacity of being a separate initiative on its own, says DFO Kohima, Mr. Rajkumar M.
BOOKS FOR CHANGE
Speaking about the initiative, Mr. Rajkumar told Indian Masterminds “As we started this initiative called Project Future last year, the pandemic barred us from creating awareness through traditional methods. This includes organizing campaigns, competitions, signages, etc. However, as pandemic did not allow us to practice this, we thought of launching something through which we can easily reach out to the youth of the society.”
He added “This is how we came up with the idea of using books as a medium to spread awareness among the masses. As books can bring a big change in someone’s life, we thought of providing environment-related books to the villages of Kohima.”
As the Forest Department is constrained with limited resources, sending staff to manage the libraries in these villages would have been a bigger task. Therefore, the officer wanted to set up these village libraries into an institutional mechanism which would require community participation for their management.
STARTING GREEN LIBRARIES
While starting this initiative Mr. Rajkumar knew that Nagaland has very strong village level institutions like village councils and youth associations. As the main target was to spread awareness in villages, the initiative was rolled out by donating green boxes filled with environment-related books for each village.
Mr Rajkumar said, “We donated these books to the village youth councils, who will further add these in the running libraries in their village. In case there is no library, the idea was to start the library with these environment-related books. In this initiative, the major role is of the community itself as they are the ones who will be reading and communicating about it in their village. As of now, we have started these green libraries in three villages, and by the end of this month we may reach up to five villages in the district.”
The main aim of the Forest Department of Kohima is to reach maximum villages and create a reading habit among the youth and adults. The officer also believes that the footfall will also increase gradually, and people who will read these books will definitely communicate about it with other people.
Mr Rajkumar also took to Twitter and asked the general public to be a part of this drive. He asked people to donate any used or unused book related to environment/wildlife conservation. He also asked for suggestions of some impactful books which could help the readers even more.
PROJECT FUTURE
`Project Future’ started during the first wave of Covid 19, with an aim of spreading awareness about environment and conservation during the pandemic. The forest department took quite proactive and innovative steps through signages, innovative video using a popular game called ‘Jenga’ and reaching over to schools in remote locations through online means.
The popular video was made in collaboration with the department of school education Nagaland and was telecast on its channel through online mode. Mr. Rajkumar said, “We reached a number of people through that video, in which I explained the biodiversity through a popular game called ‘Jenga,’’ the officer said.
The efforts of Mr. Rajkumar and the entire forest department of Kohima is being widely appreciated.
