“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”

Most school assemblies end when the students file out. This one was designed to be a beginning.

At Vandana International School, Sector 10, Dwarka, students of Classes IV to XII gathered for an Orientation Session on Sustainability, conducted in collaboration with GoSharpener – The School Student Network. The session marked the launch of a year-long Sustainability Programme at our school, built around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, responsible citizenship, leadership and eco-conscious living.

In other words: our students were not being told about sustainability. They were being handed a year in which to practise it.

Meet the Speaker

The session was led by Ms Shivani Negi, Senior Customer Success Manager at GoSharpener, who introduced our students to the programme and to the platform that will support it.

Speaking to an auditorium spanning Class IV through Class XII is no small challenge — the youngest and the oldest in that room are at completely different stages — yet Ms Negi held the attention of the whole hall, moving between big global ideas and small everyday choices with ease.

Understanding the 17 Sustainable Development Goals

At the heart of the session were the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations — a shared global agenda covering poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, clean water, affordable energy, decent work, responsible consumption, climate action, life below water, life on land and peace.

For most students, the SDGs are a set of icons glimpsed in a textbook. The session reframed them as something closer to home. Every goal, our students learnt, has a version that fits inside a school day:

• Clean water looks like a tap turned off properly.
• Responsible consumption looks like a lunchbox without single-use plastic.
• Climate action looks like a fan switched off in an empty classroom.
• Quality education looks like helping a classmate who is struggling.
• Life on land looks like a sapling that someone remembers to water in May.

Global goals are reached by a very large number of very small decisions. That was the message, and it landed.

What the Session Covered

The orientation was built around five clear ideas:

• Insights on global challenges and how sustainability creates real, measurable impact.
• Understanding the 17 UN SDGs and their role in building a better world.
• Encouraging leadership, teamwork and innovative thinking as the engines of change.
• Practical ways to adopt eco-friendly habits in everyday life, at school and at home.
• Empowering students to become responsible citizens and changemakers rather than passive observers.

From Awareness to Action: The Year Ahead

What distinguishes this initiative from a one-off awareness talk is that it comes with a structure.

GoSharpener is a platform on which school students work towards the Sustainable Development Goals, and its central feature is the Impact Profile — a personalised digital record that translates a student’s sustainable actions into points. Real actions, logged and recognised: conserving water, reducing waste, planting and caring for trees, running awareness campaigns, helping in the community.

Over the coming year, our students will take part in challenges, campaigns and projects, and will build an impact record of their own. Recognition on the platform comes in the form of points, certifications and other rewards — but the more valuable outcome is the habit itself, and the evidence of a young person who acted rather than merely agreed.

The approach also sits squarely within the spirit of NEP 2020, which asks schools to develop environmental awareness, ethical reasoning and community engagement alongside academic learning.

Why This Matters — A Note for Parents

Environmental anxiety is real among young people today, and information alone tends to make it worse. What reduces it is agency: the experience of doing something that visibly helps.

A programme like this offers your child exactly that. Along the way it develops:

• Leadership and initiative, through student-led projects.
• Teamwork, since almost no environmental effort succeeds alone.
• Research and communication skills, in planning and presenting campaigns.
• A documented record of service and initiative — increasingly relevant for senior students, as universities and scholarship panels in India and abroad look closely at sustained community involvement.
• Habits that outlast school, which is the entire point.

Parents can help simply by taking an interest. Ask what your child logged this week. Let them run a small change at home — segregating waste, cutting plastic in the kitchen, a switched-off-standby rule. A project supported at home is a project that survives past October.

Get Involved

Students of Classes IV to XII: speak to your class teacher or house coordinator to register on the platform and begin building your Impact Profile. The best time to start is the first week — points accumulate, and so do habits.

Interested in leading rather than joining? Our School Clubs and School Council are where student-led initiatives are shaped, and the Sustainability Programme will need coordinators, campaigners and communicators.

Parents and visitors who would like to see how environmental and experiential learning runs through our curriculum can explore Beyond Academics and our School Events — including our recent Hydroponics Learning Session, where students explored soil-less farming as a response to water scarcity.

Considering VIS for your child? Learn more about our approach in our Vision & Mission, review our Admission Criteria, or apply online. You are also welcome to get in touch to arrange a campus visit.

Our Commitment

At Vandana International School, we believe that a school’s responsibility does not end at producing capable students. It extends to producing students who use their capability well.

This year-long Sustainability Programme reflects our commitment to global citizenship, environmental responsibility and experiential learning, and our conviction that the generation now sitting in our classrooms will need to be more resourceful about this planet than any before it.

Our thanks to Ms Shivani Negi and the GoSharpener team for an energising start.

The orientation is over. The work begins now.

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