Environment Management Through Youth Volunteerism: A Study on Green Army, Trivandrum
摘要
The paper is a study on the Green Army of the Trivandrum Municipal Corporation in Kerala, a youth volunteer umbrella group consisting of students, youth, working professionals, retired personals, and activists which has received world attention with its structure and activities and use of its voluntary service for waste management and environmental protection. The paper aims to understand the mission and activities of the Green Army as an Environmental Youth Volunteer group, how it mobilizes the volunteers for environmental volunteerism, and in what way the Green Army model can be applied to a sustainable environment in other states of India to understand and solve various environmental issues and challenges. Open-ended interviews were conducted with six Green Army volunteers to know about the vision and mission of the Green Army from the beginning to the present stage of its growth. The respondents were the founding youth volunteers and the stakeholders of the organization. The study concludes that youth Volunteerism is the most effective and useful way of tackling and resolving environment-related problems, not only in India but across the world where young people offer their time and effort freely and voluntarily for genuine concern of the society. In this sense, it provides additional information and a new dimension to the sociology of environmental movements. It seems that young people will lead the environmental movements of this century and the case of the Green Army in Kerala, as shown in this paper, substantiates this argument.