Naveen Kumar

A young farmer from a marginalized community in Jharkhand, Naveen understands the impact of climate change, especially on poor farmers since his own crops have been previously adversely affected by changes in rainfall patterns and extreme heat in Jamshedpur. After an accounts honors degree from Kolhan University, Naveen led young people in his community to work towards cleaning and desilting ponds in the area. As a volunteer for People for Change he has also led programmes with other volunteers on creating heat maps for Jamshedpur and]advocating with the local municipality and town administration to make them understand the impact of climate change and involve them in creating an emergency plan for heat waves in the city. As a GreEntrepreneur, he created awareness among school children, divided into cohorts, about the processes involved in growing local varieties of nutrition plants. He conducted sessions on kit5chen gardening and trained the students on setting up their own. The effects of this are five fold: one, nutrition, with students getting access to local and organic produce; second, a rise in awareness and education about climate change, leading to a greater sense of shared responsibility towards the issue; third, access to food growing in these kitchen gardens can reduce the financial burden on poorer families; fourth, community engagement; and fifth, the activity acted as a supplementary hand-on learning in addition to the school curriculum.