Nearly 600 school and college students were at the Nehru Stadium on Saturday morning for their latest mission — to create awareness on rainwater harvesting. They were armed with brushes, water colours, colouring sticks and colour powders to knock out ignorance from people’s mind and tell them how the society could benefit from rainwater harvesting.
The Residents Awareness Association of Coimbatore (RAAC) in association with the Coimbatore Corporation had organised the painting and rangoli contests for students as part of the weeklong rainwater harvesting awareness programmes.
R. Raveendran, Honorary Secretary, RAAC, said that following an announcement on the competitions a week ago, they had informed the students of the topic through schools on Friday.
They had also grouped the students into three categories — students in classes VI, VII and VIII formed the first group, those in classes IX, X, XI and XII were in the second group and those from colleges formed the third group.
At the stadium, the students were busy with brushes and colour powder brightening up the chart and place allotted to them to bring out their creativity. S. Keerthivassan, a Class VII student of Bharathi Matriculation Higher Secondary School, was trying to present the advantage and disadvantage of harvesting rainwater.
Krishalni A. of SSVM World School said that she was there to do her bit to create awareness on rainwater harvesting.
She said that if people planted saplings and nurtured them into trees, there would be more rain and that could be harvested.
She said that depleting groundwater table was a cause for concern.
Corporation school student M. Nandhini said she had participated in the rangoli event to emphasise the importance of harvesting rain water.
Mr. Raveendran said that the organisers had decided to treat students undergoing painting classes as a separate category and did not want to judge them along with amateurs.
Corporation officials said that after judges selected the winners, the civic body would inform the students through the institutions. And, on June 28, the paintings would be displayed on the exhibition to be organised at the VOC Park grounds.
