The THIRD BATCH of the PG Diploma in Inter-Religious Dialogue and Water for Sustainable Development began from 16th December 2020 and completed on 24th March 2021. There were 20 students who had taken this course. 

During this time Paper 3: Sustainable Development and Alternative Energy was covered. The main features covered in this paper were:  Components of Ecosystem, Ecological Pyramids, Conservation, Impact of Human on Environment, Environmental Protection Act, Other Acts and Policy Statements related to Environment, Basic Concepts in Development, Sustainable Development, Concepts in Ecological Economics, Global Climate Change, Climate Change Mitigation and Adaption, Ecological Footprints and Renewable Energy Technologies. 

Together with lectures, Paper 4 covered Project Work. Every student was asked to write a short project work. The teachers were guiding their projects. 

Earlier the students have already covered various components such as a paper on « Culture » ; « Inter-cultural skills », « Conflict resolutions », Developing Cultural Intelligence », « Basic and Foundational Beliefs of Different Religions », « Various Debate on Sustainable Development ». 

Fifteen students were awarded the PG Diploma during this academic year 2020-2021.  This programme is a collaborative venture of three Academic Centres, St. Andrew’s College, Nirmal Niketan: Postgraduate Research Centre and college in social work and the Institute of Indian culture; Postgraduate Research in Anthropology and Sociology. 

Other Activities

Hope on the Wheels: Nonformal Education in the slums of Jogeswari and Andheri 

Jogeswari and Andheri are located in the North-West Suburb of Mumbai. There are several slums located in these areas. Plenty of children roam here and there without going to School. These children do not have proper dress and financial means to study in the formal schools. Knowing well their situation, with the request of Advocate Mr. Giuseppe Musumeci, the Chairholder of UNESCO Chair at St. Andrew’s College, we began to collaborate with the NGO known as Hope on the Wheels. Dr. Marimuthu, runs this NGO. He began gathering the wandering children at Jogeswari slums and began to arrange a makeshift temporary shed to educate these children by appointing a teacher to teach these children to count numbers and to learn alphabets of Hindi, Marathi and English. A lot of children were coming to learn. But this could not be continued during rainy season. Knowing this well Dr. Marimuthu devised a long bus with educational facilities. We began to collaborate with Dr. Marimuthu to continue this mission of non-formal education in the bus during the rainy season. The Bus was named as “Hope on the Wheels”. This Bus use to move from one slum to another at Jogeswari  and Andheri  East collecting children and giving them the basic Non-formal education. This mission is continuing. By this collaboration, the UNESCO activities of St. Andrew’s College is involved in Non-formal education of slum children.

Here are a few Photographs: