Tata Power and PETA India Join Forces to Bring Humane Education to Students
As part of its corporate social responsibility initiative – and just ahead of Teachers’ Day on 5 September – Tata Power has teamed up with PETA India to help teachers at 250 schools across India access materials from our humane education programme, Compassionate Citizen, in order to help foster kindness, empathy, and respect for animals and others in their students. Our programme materials and accompanying video are now available to teachers for students aged 8 to 12 on Tata Power’s Club Enerji webpage.
Most children naturally feel concern and affection for animals but often become desensitized to the cruelty in society and lose sight of their compassion. A lack of respect for other species can translate into insensitivity and cruelty towards fellow humans, too.
In fact, it’s well documented by psychologists, sociologists, and law-enforcement officials that acts of cruelty to animals by children are often a precursor to violence against humans. Humane education can help ensure a future in which animals, humans, and the environment we all live in are treated respectfully.
The Compassionate Citizen programme is a comprehensive interdisciplinary curriculum that includes a 23-minute video featuring inspiring animal stories, amazing facts, easy-to-understand analogies that help students take someone else’s point of view, and age-appropriate information on ways that kids can save animals. It touches on stopping bullying, helping the environment, saving animals from harm, taking good care of animal companions, and much more. The material is currently available in English, will soon be available in Hindi, and can be translated into other languages when there is significant demand.
This programme can easily be included in the school curricula via language arts, science, and social studies and when teaching about environmental issues and values. It’s also perfect for use in eco and animal rights clubs in schools.
What’s more, Compassionate Citizen is endorsed by the Animal Welfare Board of India, the Central Board of Secondary Education, and Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan schools. It has been voluntarily used by 1.67 lakh schools, reaching nearly 59 million children across India. Many states – including Andhra Pradesh, Chandigarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, and Telangana – have issued circulars asking schools to integrate a previous version of the programme into their official curricula that is available in their local languages.
Teachers can write directly to PETA India at [email protected] for a free copy of the Compassionate Citizen educational material and video. For more information, please visit CompassionateCitizen.com.
