“Students to be groomed for environmental consciousness early on,” says Hon’ble Secretary General of Commonwealth Nations

 Hyderabad, 17 February 2024: H. E. Rev. Hon. Patrcia Scotland – Hon’ble Secretary General of Commonwealth Nations visited the Heartfulness International School at Kanha Shanti Vanam Campus during the two-day ‘Sustainability in Classroom’ initiative hosted by Heartfulness Institute in the outskirts of Hyderabad. Hon’ble Secretary General was joined by Ms. Anna Rajkumar – Principal, Heartfulness International School and was led on a guided tour of the facility which is sustainability-driven and prioritizes training the students in environmental-consciousness very early on. Ms. Scotland was impressed by the pedagogy adopted in grooming the children to be the next generation of thought-leaders on environment and sustainability besides sound academics. Hon’ble Secretary General interacted with the students who welcomed her with Sanskrit shlokas. The primary students also performed Gujrati and Kenyan dance forms showcasing a diverse heritage and culture.

1. E. Rev. Hon. Patricia Scotland – Hon’ble Secretary General of Commonwealth Nationssaid about introducing students to environmental conscious on a young age, “When children are exposed to sustainability concepts at an impressionable age, it stays with them for a lifetime and moulds them into future leaders who can guard and lead the planet to a better future.”She added that she was impressed by Heartfulness International School’s initiative on bringing sustainability to classrooms with a practical approach.

Ms. Anna Rajkumar – Principal, Heartfulness International School added about the relevance of Sanskrit in modern times, “We aim to produce very grounded leaders who learn the values through a treasure trove of Sanskrit language. It also unifies the students, helps them gain clarity of thought and we train them early on to journal their observations of their experiments on plants and environment around them.”

The Heartfulness International School is a unique school with the concept of not only housing sustainable infrastructure and biodiversity, but also groom the students through environmental values, enable students to use scientific curriculum wherein they test for themselves the viability of sustainable initiatives – AgriTecture, Hydroponics, Nature Farming, Microgreen Labs and make their reports on observations. The school integrates sustainability and green living ideas in school curricula from around the world and conveys the critical need to regenerating the action to climate change.

The focus is on making children the future thought-leaders on environment and climate change. They are also trained to keep in touch with their roots through the knowledge of Sanskrit to produce grounded leaders who can have a discovery-driven approach and detectability-based learning. The partners of the schools are Ministry of Education (Govt. of India), United Nations, ICRISAT, AICTE, ICAR.

About Heartfulness: Heartfulness offers a simple set of meditative practices and lifestyle changes, first developed at the turn of the twentieth century and formalized into teaching through the Shri Ram Chandra Mission in 1945 in India with a goal to bring peace, happiness, and wisdom to one heart at a time. These practices are a modern form of Yoga designed to support contentment, inner calm, and stillness, compassion, courage, and clarity of thought, as the first step towards a purposeful life. They are simple and easily adopted and are appropriate for people from all walks of life, cultures, religious beliefs, and economic situations, who are over the age of fifteen. Ongoing training in Heartfulness practices continues at thousands of schools and colleges, and over 100,000 professionals are meditating in corporations, non-governmental, and government bodies worldwide. More than 5,000 Heartfulness Centers are supported by thousands of certified volunteer trainers and millions of practitioners in 160 countries.