Pulwama, Feb 13: A private school in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district has introduced organic farming as part of the curriculum for the students.
Dolphin International School (DIS), situated at Tengpuna in Pulwama outskirts, has introduced the organic farming class ‘Garden of Hope’ which will be part of the syllabus for the 5th and 6th class students.
“The Garden of Hope started at DIS is based on the concept of sustainability model,” Mohammad Farooq Fazili, Founder and Chairperson of Dolphin International School, said, adding, that the farming sector is one of the important sectors of the rural economy which can address the issue of unemployment.
“Being in the rural area, we don’t provide exposure to farming to students. We discourage students from farming by saying that it is the job of labourers, which is unfortunate,” Fazili said, adding that agriculture is an asset which needs to be utilized.
He said students should know about farming and new techniques which they can use in their orchards. This is the need of the hour to teach emerging concepts to students at the school level.
The school chairperson said that for teaching the concept of organic farming, they have tied up with a renowned scientist Shiva Vandana.
“The preliminary work has been started. We have established a poly greenhouse in the school campus where students are introduced to organic farming. They take part in plantation, seed formation and segregation,” he said, adding that they work at a small level.
He added that “students are our messengers”. “We involve 120 students in a year and in the next year, an equal number will learn about it. They will pass on the information to their families and this way the concept will gradually grow,” he explained.
Fazili said the prime focus at Dolphin International School is to create “students for life”. “We want our students to be role models for society.”
