By OUR STAFF REPORTER
DEHRADUN, 10 Jun: This June, ‘Making A Difference by Being the Difference’ (MAD by BTD), celebrated its 9th anniversary by organising its flagship event, ‘MADathon’. Relying solely on the pocket money funds collected from its young volunteers, MAD has been striving for the betterment of Dehradun, whether through providing food and assistance to the poor or its efforts for the betterment of River Rispana.
Being well aware of the COVID 19 situation, people at MAD felt that the youth centric festival should not be conducted through conventional means. So, instead, it organised its 8th MADathon through the online medium starting with ‘The MAD talks’. These series of panel discussions were felicitated by Padma Shri awardee MC Mehta, Vasundhra Das and Almitra H Patel at the national level discussions of solid waste management and MC Mehta’s journey in the field of environmental law. At the Uttarakhand Level, panel discussions were held by Dr Vandana Shiva, Padma Bhushan awardee Dr Anil Joshi, Kalyan Singh Rawat and Miteshwar Anand, who discussed the realm of an environment-based ecology and the ways through which the returning migrated citizens could be given jobs in their own district. At the city level, the panellists included Lokesh Ohri, Paramjit Singh Kakkar and Jagdamba Prasad Maithani, who talked about their old memories of how Doon used to be and discussed a sustainable model of development that could make that history come back into the present. So far, all of these videos have reached approximately 73,000 people and counting.
A quiz competition based on an environmental theme was also organised on the next day and was presided over by Divya Dubey and Vineeta Bannerjee, who acted as quizmasters for the event. To foster further discussions and awareness about the environment, a Youth Parliament was also conducted in which students from all over the country debated and discussed in a simulated Uttarakhand Legislative Assembly and Lok Sabha environment. At the state level, topics like Rispana rejuvenation and its possible inclusion in the Smart city project, while at the national level, the environment protection act was discussed where everyone gave their suggestions and improvements to draft a final bill that would modify the act.
The winners were soon declared with the winners of each respective event as follows:
Lok Sabha: – Best Parliamentarian- Rishi Gusain from DAV PG College, High Commendation- Anirudh Bharadia from Amity University Kolkata, Special Mention- Shivansh Badoni from Delhi Public School, Dehradun.
Uttarakhand Legislative Committee: – Best Parliamentarian- Siddharth Bhatia from Brightlands School, Dehradun, Prakhar Tiwari from Doon International School, Dehradun, Siddharth Ranjan from DPS Dehradun.
Quiz Competition: Shivank Devliyal, Prakhar Tiwari and Kartik Bhandari.
MAD also pledged that no matter what difficulties may arise, they shall tirelessly keep working for the betterment of Doon in any way they can. Some of the MAD members that made the events possible were Karan Kapoor, Swati Singh, Archie Bisht, Satvik Nijhon, Asmita Pant, Aditya, Anshu, Darish, Ayush, Nikita, Saurav Joshi, Ritika, Chetna, Adarsh, Saksham, Yash amongst others.
