Youths pledge to do their bit to conserve water

World Water Day is celebrated every year to raise awareness about the water and sanitation crisis. Goal 6 of the UN’s Sustainable Development aims at ‘Ensuring access to water and sanitation for all’, which,  which is to be fulfilled by 2030.

In fact, the progress is already visible as in 2020, 74 per cent of the global population had access to safely managed drinking water services, up from 70 per cent in 2015, as per the United Nations. However, the idea is to work four times faster to meet the Sustainable Development goal on time. And this is not a situation that any single group can resolve. Every individual in this world needs to actively participate to tackle water-related issues like water scarcity, water pollution, inadequate water supply, lack of sanitation, etc.

To tackle these issues, many volunteers are organising informational campaigns to raise awareness about improving water quality, reducing water pollution, minimising release of hazardous chemicals and materials and saving water globally.

Therefore, aligned with this goal, National Service Scheme, Unnat Bharat Abhiyan, and Rotaract Club of Apeejay Stya University, Gurugram recently organised a two-day event on the occasion of World Water Day. The theme for the programme was “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

The aim of the event was to familiarise students with water crisis and make them understand their duties and responsibilities as human beings towards society, nation and the world at large.

During the event, movies were screened for the students, which were based on true events on water. It was followed by a discussion on water conservation.

Dr Vijay Kumar, Associate Professor of the School of Education, administered the event and further encouraged the students to take a pledge to save water. “I take an oath to conserve water and to use water wisely. I pledge to consume water judiciously and not waste even a drop of water. I will treat water as the most precious treasure that I possess and consume it accordingly. I pledge to motivate my family, friends and neighbours to use water wisely and not waste it. It is our planet and only we can save it.”

While sharing her views, Charu Bansal pursuing B.Tech + M.Tech in Biotechnology said, “World Water Day focuses attention on the importance of freshwater and supports the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) which is water for all.”

Another student, Ajay Singh Rawat of BBA-HRM programme expressed, “Prof. Vijay Kumar made us familiar with the importance of the occasion of World Water Day and then we had a discussion on Sustainable Development, its goals and targets (17 goals and 169 targets).”

He further added, “After the discussion, we had a movie show in which we saw two movies on water conservation and discussed the researched assumptions. Later, we discussed our responsibilities to save water on the personal level as well as professional level. In the end, we took a pledge to conserve water.”