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– A rapid telephonic survey, made on World Environment Day, among rural youths has shown that young people see MGNREGS as an opportunity for both employment as well as water and forest conservation.<\/h3>\n– A rapid telephonic survey, made on World Environment Day, among rural youths has shown that young people see MGNREGS as an opportunity for both employment as well as water and forest conservation.<\/h3>\nBhubaneswar, June 6: Given the economic challenges posed by the COVID 19 pandemic, youth in Odisha voted for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) as one of the best ways to help local youths economically while reviving water bodies, agriculture and forests in the state. This was revealed in a rapid telephonic survey by the #Youth4Water campaign in which 1,000 young people participated. .\u00a0 \u201cWe reached out to a large number of youth from across the state through the campaign to find out their opinion on both economic and ecological revival.\u00a0 About 70 percent of them thought MGNREGS has the potential to help the villagers in many ways,\u201d said Ajit Kumar Panda, one of the leaders of the campaign. About 65 percent of the youths contacted were boys, and rest girls, he added.<\/p>\n
This campaign is being facilitated by Water Initiatives, Patang and other partner organisations such as Gram Swaraj, Young India and Social Awareness Institution (SAI) in cooperation with UNICEF, Odisha.\u00a0 About one thousand youths from colleges in five districts are now actively involved in this campaign. The #Youth4Water campaign intends to reach out to each youth of Odisha by 2025 with messages of water and river conservation; sanitation; hygiene and climate change awareness, pointed out Bhumisuta Sahu of Patang. This survey was done as part of the World Environment Day (WED) 2020 preparations of the campaign. The global theme of the WED this year is \u2018Time for<\/p>\n
\u201cExperts around the world, including the UN agencies, are urging governments to look for economic revival packages that are in harmony with nature conservation.\u00a0 We are pushing for \u201cRecover Better with Nature\u201d and want the youths to be part of all these actions in Odisha, said Monika Nielsen, Chief, Field Office, UNICEF, Odisha.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cIt was important for us to capture the views of young people in Odisha and encourage them to play a role in the economic and ecological revival in the state. We hope that MGNREGS can be leveraged to not only provide an economic opportunity but also become a game changer for ecological restoration,\u201d added Shipra Saxena WASH Specialist, UNICEF, Odisha.<\/p>\n
The MGNREGS already has a big focus on creating water bodies.\u00a0 However, the youths wanted that there should be more emphasis on both individual and community water infrastructure including irrigation structures under the scheme.\u00a0 Providing nursery raising training to youths and helping them raise nurseries of local and indigenous species, assisting them with plantation of such species and create local forests in an ecologically sustainable manner, developing horticulture gardens and helping the youths in promoting local food processing units, etc. were some of the key suggestions from the youths. \u201cThey have also asked for enhancing the number of work days and wage so that the villagers won\u2019t have to migrate out.\u00a0 Some youths have also suggested that the migrant workers from Odisha, who have just returned from other states, should be supported with better opportunities here. Their skills should be tapped to enhance local services and environmental conservation efforts,\u201d said Subodh Kumar Pradhan, a student volunteer of the campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are nice suggestions.\u00a0 Through these and many such activities, the youths can take part in sustainable development efforts of the government in a planned manner,\u201d opined Bhumisuta.\u00a0 \u201cYouths can take a leading role in rebuilding the village economies as well as conserving local natural resources.\u00a0 Their opinions should be counted in planning such revival actions,\u201d she said further.<\/p>\n
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Panda\u00a0 further pointed out that suggestions gathered during the perception survey have today been discussed in a webinar organised on occasion of the World Environment Day, and will be soon sent to the Chief Minister of Odisha urging his support and consideration.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
– A rapid telephonic survey, made on World Environment Day, among rural youths has shown that young people see MGNREGS as an opportunity for both employment as well as water and forest conservation. – Prioritising demands from youth and enhancing wage rates can help check migration. -Tapping the skills of the migrant workers who have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shasakprashasak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}