Deeksha Bhatia tells Sangeeta Yadav why she left her profession to work towards spreading awareness about environment conservation
She left her job to work for the cause of environment and education. Meet 26-year-old Deeksha Bhatia, director of Swechha — an organisation that works towards making Delhi green, educate children and youth about urban farming and creating a clean environment.
“Swechha was started back in 2000 by Vimlendu Jha as a campaign — We For Yamuna that eventually became one of the strongest youth voices. Swechha means one’s own freewill and that’s why we continue to be an organisation that works extensively with volunteers across different age groups and backgrounds,” Bhatia says who moved to Delhi from a small city Haasi in Haryana to pursue English literature from Delhi University’s Jesus and Mary College.
Bhatia then went on to pursue Masters in Advertising and Public Relations from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. Her calling for working towards environment conservation and education came in 2012 when she left her job.
“We have worked with children especially the ones who don’t go to schools. Pagdandi, an in-formal learning programme for Jagdamba slum children was launched. We do a lot of life-skills learning, exposure trips, academic teaching, workshop, and much more. For adolescents, we provided experiential learning by interacting with the experts and make them employable,” Bhatia says.
From organising 12-day Yamuna yatra, workshops on urban gardening to giving students rural exposure without any gadget or junk food through Gram Anibhav programme, all this have been run in various Government and private schools like Vasant Valley, Modern School, Shiv Nadar School, Green Fields School, Jamia school, Malviya Nagar Govt Boys Schools, Indian School etc.
“During the yatra, we take the students to all the way up to the glacier and then down towards Delhi Yamuna to see how the river changes at every place. During Yamuna walk in Delhi, when the students see the drains been pumped into the Yamuna, that’s when the reality hits them and they are more eager to take that action for a good cause,” Bhatia tells you.
Swechha has been doing extensive plantation work too. “One of the biggest campaigns is Monsoon Wooding in which we grow trees and want Delhi to get back its green power. We have been creating forests across cities. last year, we created Gurgaon’s Urban Fruit Forest and Urban Nature Forest by planting 2,500-plus saplings over two years. It was done through the technique of regenerative food forest which is self-sustainable natural forest. This year, we did crowd funding campaign in which we encouraged people to adopt saplings. We were able to raise funds for about 2,400 saplings which we have planted across different places,” Bhatia says.
An extension to Monsoon Wooding is Air Shed in which they have adopted a park in Vasant Kunj to create Delhi’s first model community park that will have herb garden, butterfly garden, kitchen garden etc. “There are about 18,000 parks in Delhi, which are under developed and under-utilised. Air Shed, which is done in collaboration with the American Embassy, signifies an area where the quality of the air is good. To create this park, we aim to have not only all the qualities of the Botanical Garden that will give you fresh air but can be educational and encourage people to grow your own food or herb. Around 5,000 saplings have already been planted,” Bhatia opines.
To generate more revenue, Green The Map was launched where Bhatia works with scrap dealers and tailors to create products tetra pack, tier tube, etc.