Outreach Program ‘Increasing Environmental Awareness’

Environmental degradation and unsustainable consumption of resources are occurring so frequently that they are threatening the very existence of life on our planet. Bangladesh – where the pressures of economic growth, overpopulation, and poverty combine with the vulnerability to floods, erosion and a rising sea level – is among the most vulnerable countries. Unfortunately, there is a significant gap between an increasing demand for proper knowledge of environmental issues and the number of people who are aware of this demand and who can execute this knowledge and skills. It is, therefore, high time for creating and raising awareness of environmental issues and problems among different sections of Bangladesh society. As the youths are the future leaders of our country, who should gradually take the lead in addressing and minimizing the mentioned problems, we have designed an outreach program for raising environmental awareness among the students of high schools and colleges in Dhaka. The program is organized by the Outreach, Extension and Continuing Education (OECE) and conducted by our School of Environmental Science and Management (SESM).

Targets of this program are:

o To promote the need for environmental training.

o To educate and promote environmental awareness among students.

o To demonstrate highlighting some of the principles of environmental mitigation.

This short program – designed for senior students – comprise an interactive presentation, short demonstrations, discussions, quiz sessions and prize distributions. Our aim is to disseminate information about current environmental issues and problems, motivate the students to think outside the box to discuss the solutions, and contribute to raising environmental awareness.

We have successfully completed our first outreach program at the Scholastica school (Mirpur branch) on January 23, 2017. Next, we will conduct more outreach programs in other high schools and colleges in Dhaka.