An environment soldier heads for an eventful retirement

Vadayakkandy Narayanan is the founder of ‘SAVE’ movement in Kozhikode

Over his 33-year-long career, Vadayakkandy Narayanan has not used anything other than an ink pen to write. Being the founder of one of the most successful students’ environment movements in the State, this English teacher of Shantiniketan Higher Secondary School cannot have anything but an eventful retirement. He is contributing a facility that includes a lotus pond for the birds to bathe and drink water, to the school that he served his entire life.

Mr. Narayanan was the founder of Student Army for Vadakara Environment (SAVE) in 2016, an environment movement of school children in and around Vadakara. The project was extended across the district in 2018 as Student Army for Vivid Environment and at one point the State had even mooted that it be extended across Kerala.

He organised a variety of programmes under the banner of SAVE in the district, of which, ‘Pakshikku Kudineer’ a project to quench the thirst of birds during summer, was a prominent one. “We had pitchers in every students’ house and in the school during summer. This mini lotus pond will be a permanent fixture though,” Mr. Narayanan said.

As a young teacher in the late 1990s, Vadayakkandy Narayanan made use of the government grants for eco-clubs in schools effectively to come up with a project to free Thiruvallur panchayat of plastic, at a time when such campaigns were rather unheard of.

Under the banner of SAVE, he launched a project for ‘Zero Waste Kozhikode’ in 2018 roping in school children for the cause. The Rain Walks down the Kuttiadi ghat road in June or July every year, ‘Jeevajalam’, the project to clean up and protect natural water bodies, besides the ‘Project Ink Pen’, have been huge successes in the district. “However, we could not sustain the ‘Jeevajalam’ project due to public non cooperation”, he said.

Even after his retirement by the end of March, this dedicated soldier of the environment plans to continue his battle as a coordinator in the Kozhikode district panchayat’s Biodiversity Board.