Vivekanand Uchchatar Uttar Buniyadi Vidyalaya: A Green Campus School Promoting Education And Sustainable Living
Vivekanand Uchchatar Uttar Buniyadi Vidyalaya educates the students about nature conservation, agriculture, and animal husbandry amidst nature and strives to make them good students as well as good human beings
Located in the lap of nature in Vankuva, about 30 km from Vadodara, Vivekanand Uchchatar Uttar Buniyadi Vidyalaya teaches students the valuable principles of culture life and academics. Here, children, apart from traditional classroom teaching, learn nature conservation, agriculture, and animal husbandry amidst nature and strive to become good students as well as good human beings.
Located in Waghodiya, Vivekanand Uchchatar Uttar Buniyadi Vidyalaya is a unique school amidst lush green surroundings. This Green Campus school at Vankuva is spread across 80 acres of land, surrounded by various types of trees, plantations, and farming land for food and fodder. Run by Muni Seva Ashram at Goraj, the school offers classes from grades 9 to 12 and has a student body of 250 students, primarily from economically disadvantaged families. Notably, the school has a higher proportion of girls than boys, and the management takes great care of all students. All students are required to stay in the compulsory hostel facility.
Established in 1991, the school celebrated its silver jubilee a year ago. Currently, Balvantsinh Zala has been serving as the school principal since 2005, along with 10 teachers. "This is a green campus spread over 80 acres of land and provides students with the opportunity to study amidst nature. This is a grant-in-aid school where admission is based on merit, and the dropout rate is nil. It is equipped with facilities such as a smart classroom, computer and science laboratories, internet access, a rent, prayer hall, two separate hostels for boys and girls, and solar panels installed on buildings and other areas for cooking, electricity needs, and other purposes," said Zala.
Balvantsinh Zala tries to maintain the Green Campus status of the school while also providing a good education to the students. "The Green Campus has different plantations, fruit orchards, and farmland for food and fodder. A wide range of scientific methods are used to make compost with the biomass generated at the farm. The majority of students come from the farming community and given that the Vivekanand Uchchatar Uttar Buniyadi Vidyalaya school has designed an additional syllabus where the students are taught scientific ways of farming, animal husbandry, dairy farming, and agro-processing. Agriculture is a subject and the students compulsorily have to work on the farm for one hour every day. The aim is to teach them farming techniques which later help them in farming as they all come from farming families. The campus has a variety of fruit trees, and vegetables, along with many medicinal plants," said Zala.
The daily routine of the students of this school starts at 5:00 a.m. In the morning, after getting up, all have to go to the field for yoga and exercise, after which they have to do their work. School timings are from 7:45 a.m. to 1:25 p.m. After lunch and rest until four o'clock, all have to go to the farm for Shramdaan. From five to six in the evening, all have to play different games compulsorily on the field. Mass prayers are offered in the prayer room both in the morning and the evening. And then, the rest of the time, the students have to do their compulsory reading and homework.
Solar panels have been installed in the school hostel, and each room is provided with an individual point. They have also provided each student with and student with a personal study light, which helps students who want to read or do homework at night peacefully. Besides, the cooking system is also solar-powered.
The school organises sports and cultural events and science and art fairs throughout the year giving a platform to the budding students showcasing their talents. The students even performed at the state level in Khel Mahakumbh and Science fairs. For the last five years, this school has maintained the 100% result and also won the Best School award in 2020. They also won the Swachata award for maintaining cleanliness in and around the campus. In the future, they want to introduce the Science stream in the school. The school also pays the fees of students who want to study further and helps around 100 plus students in paying their college fees. Many of the students are studying in reputed colleges and many of Both sides around one kilometer area is surrounded by lush Green trees and plantations which gives the school a unique identity. 25 Gir breed cows are reared at the campus itself. The biogas produced at Vankuva through cow dung is piped to three nearby homes for domestic use.
