National Environment Awareness Campaign (NEAC)

 

NEAC is a flagship environmental awareness campaign of the government at the grassroots level involving thousands of NGOs, voluntary agencies, education institutions, and others. Financial assistance is provided to participating organizations for carrying out both awareness and activity-oriented programs. The activities are aimed at spreading environmental awareness, which would lead to remedial action from the individual and society. The activities of participating organizations are monitored at the state level by the organization appointed as regional resource agencies (RRAs). The aim of SSD is to the aware the general public about the impact of climate change on mankind and its impact on livelihood, especially in agriculture and animal husbandry.

Climate change is a burning issue and Rajasthan facing a huge problem of shortage of rain, heavy rainfall in decent areas & hence improper agriculture production. Rajasthan’s villages are heavily dependent on agriculture. SSD emphasized the awareness among farmers/general public about the impacts of climate change on agriculture cultivation, community participation in Plantation, and students and vehicle owner involvement in pollution checking. For this sake, SSD conducted a seminar in Karauli to the sentient general public, a workshop in villages to aware farmers of climate change and adaptation, competition among students about climate change, plantation by the community, and pollution checkups in the city.

SSD has been implementing a natural resource management program through community action in 50 villages with the aim to save forests, biodiversity, and natural resources.

The following works have been done under this activity:  

1. Renovation of Pokers.
2. Deepening of wells.
3. Land improvement activities.
4. Pasture development.
5. Agriculture High-yielding crop demonstration.
6. Veterinary camps.
7. Afforestation.
8. Environment Education program.
9. Exposure visits of villagers to developed watershed sites. 
10. Publication of Quarterly New letter “Aranyararta”.
11. Capacity building of SSD staff.
12. Creation of community-based Organizations. 

As we know, local villagers depend on agriculture and forest for livelihood, so we are also educating them on forest management, uses of new technologies in agriculture, rainwater harvesting, and becoming self-dependent. As there is a lack of water in Rajasthan State, we have also focused to improve irrigation facilities in the Karauli district. Deepening of wells is being done to improve drinking water facilities and the rainwater harvesting concept is being taught to villagers so that they can store water and use that water for drinking, agriculture, and many other purposes. 

After implementing different programs on natural resource management and environmental education, SSD with the help of CEE and the Forest Department is been able to create awareness of all these issues successfully. Different projects on water sanitation and Biodiversity has been implemented successfully and now villagers are fully aware of the importance of forest and the environment in society.

Here it is worth mentioning that all the decisions for community/Individual asset creation are decided by the respective village development committees (selected by villagers in an open session of gram sabha). In the case of individual & community asset creation, the contribution of villagers is 50% & 25% (minimum) respectively.