The Millennium National School has chosen Education for Sustainable Development as a central part of its mission and its educational plan. It is through the Sustainability Lab Project that context for active citizenship, critical thinking and inventiveness will be created for the students.

 

The Millennium Sustainability Lab is the school’s roadmap for building and operating a healthier, more sustainable campus community. We seek approaches to innovation for human challenges that emulate nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies. The goal is to create new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul. The School community is committed to creating a whole new culture of how we work and live.

 

Objectives

• Learning from nature as a cross-curricular theme
  Nature will not only be viewed in terms of aesthetic beauty but also as a model, as a measure and as a mentor. It will be an opportunity for the students to see not what we can extract from the natural world but what we can learn from it.
 
• Piloting solutions to tackle real world challenges
  We will strive to encourage innovators, researchers, students, faculty, and staff to continue piloting sustainability solutions on campus to tackle real-world challenges. The plan is to use our campus as a test bed to generate solutions that enhance the health of people and planet, nature and ecosystems, culture and learning
 
• Creating Diverse Ecosystems for observing nature’s strategies and values
  In nature all the players perform in harmony for life to flourish. Seeing these virtues – symbiosis, networking, balance, sharing – connects us to nature and each other. We fall in love with it, and whatever we love, we are hardwired to protect.
  Nature fits form to function, uses only the energy it needs, rewards cooperation and local expertise, curbs excess power from within. Awe and reverence flow out while observing nature’s creations. By being attentive to nature’s lessons, we can hope for change of heart, to use this new technology to help ourselves fit in on earth rather than the other way round.
 
• Eco-internship for students with eco-entrepreneurs
  As a part of experiencing different ways in which students learn to be useful within a society, they can choose to be working with eco-entrepreneurs. The field trips can be thoughtfully chosen to reflect the internship project. The science projects can be an year long activity carefully mentored by the eco-entrepreneurs.
 
• Educating the community in sustainable ways of living through experiential and experimental data
  We believe that schools must not only carry out research, but also translate the findings of that research into action. Community engagement campaigns and programs will be focused on using our campus to incubate great ideas and replicable models for change.
  Students can organize sustainable living convergences where the community is invited to the school and educated about the alternative lifestyles by reflecting the pattern of nature’s wisdom. The school can invite other schools and inspire them to emulate such projects in their own way.
 
• Incubating and improving ideas for creating earth friendly businesses using nature inspired solutions
  We want our budding entrepreneurs to meet men and women who are exploring nature’s masterpieces and then copying these designs and manufacturing processes to solve our own problems. They will be able to discuss their own innovations from the perspective of sustainability and this awareness will result in improving their designs.

A thriving community of members is the life-blood of every school program. Your participation, support and contribution will help make this project a reality.