The Jesuit Education Board has Administrators and Principals from Jesuit Schools in Bombay Province. The Board meets twice a year and has extensive discussions on various topics.

Fr Evarist Newnes, the Manager of St Michaels Marathi medium and the St Michaels English medium School at Manickpur, had attended the JAAI West Zone Congress held at Kolhapur on 10-12 May 2019. The Congress was conducted by Xesakop (St Xavier’s Ex-Students Association). He felt that the workshop conducted during the Congress should be presented to the Jesuit Education Board. This would also help increase awareness of JAAI West Zone Activities with the School Representatives.

The Being Responsible Workshop was held on 17 Aug 19 at St Mary’s High School ICSE, Mazgaon. There were close to 45 participants. The Jesuit Board, along with Fr Francis Swamy , Principal made very good arrangements and were good hosts.

One of the feedbacks received during the Kolhapur Congress was that the Calculation of Carbon Footprint should be via a website or an app. This will make it easier to access, compute and more time can be spent on discussions regarding reduction of the Carbon Footprint.

Gerry Mascarenhas, JAAI Council Member, Alumnus of St Stanislaus, got to work and quickly created an easy to use Carbon Footprint Calculator (CFC). The link for the same is : http://jaaindia.com/cfc.

John Neelankavil, Region Representative WUJA, has been pushing for changes to the presentation and website. Gerry has been keen to include Carbon Sink in the presentation.

Babaprasad Lanka, Alumnus St Xavier’s Kolhapur, updated and made the presentation.

The revised Being Responsible presentation was received very well. The participants were keen to know their individual Carbon Footprints. There was animated discussion, expressions of despair, and immediate discussions on how things could be improved. The participants felt that the plastic water bottles (single use), notepads, pens which are given are convenient but not good choices as far as lowering our footprint.

Some of the key takeaways were : how many plants should I have in my school ? what is impact of lowering carbon on individual health, how do we change our habits ?

The next steps are to increase interaction between JAAI West Zone, the Schools and their Alumni.