Summary:
Growing interest: The Government High School in Chinnappati village in Madurai district has become an orchard with more than 400 trees of different varieties. According to Ms.
Vasanthal, who played an instrumental role in transforming the school into a green campus, the motivation came from the failure she faced while serving as Headmistress in a school near Parthibanur in Ramanathapuram district. The school was also thinking of generating a modest and sustainable income for maintenance of the orchard through sale of fruits and other produce once the trees attained full growth, she said. Today, each of the roughly 120 children studying in the school from Class 6 to 10 has been assigned four trees for maintenance. Four years later, the school, which has recently received Swachh Vidyalaya Puraskar from the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, has become an orchard with a variety of fruit-bearing and flowering plants in different stages of growth..