On a winter afternoon in Faridabad, 13-year-old Naitik stands by a classroom window, the sky outside thick with grey smog. Traffic hums in the distance, and the air feels heavy enough to tighten the chest within minutes.
Inside the room, however, something different is unfolding.
Naitik dips a paintbrush into bright green colour and carefully coats an empty plastic bottle. In a while, this bottle will be filled with soil, planted with a sapling, and hung on the wall as part of a vertical garden inside his school’s eco-friendly library. As he paints, his eyes stay focused — not just on the bottle, but on the idea behind it.
“Earlier, school felt routine; now, even on Sundays, we plant saplings or sit under trees and read. This library makes me want to come to school every day,” says Naitik to The Better India.
A pencil drawn towards change
For children growing up in Delhi–NCR, polluted air is often treated as an unavoidable part of life. Winter mornings arrive with burning eyes, restricted outdoor play, and reminders to stay indoors. Over time, smog becomes background noise, something endured rather than questioned.
But in four government schools in Faridabad, that sense of inevitability is being gently replaced with awareness and agency.
Founded in 2019 by Sandy Khanda, Green Pencil Foundation emerged from a simple belief — that children, especially those from government schools, deserve more than survival tools in a polluted environment. They deserve the knowledge and confidence to care for the world around them.
For Sandy this belief is deeply personal. Growing up in a small village in Haryana, he witnessed inequality early — limited access to education, gender bias, and environmental neglect woven into everyday life. A serious road accident in 2016 became a turning point, pushing him to act on what he had long felt but never voiced.
“I realised that life is pretty unpredictable and courage doesn’t come from having everything figured out. It comes from deciding to begin,” says Sandy to The Better India.
What began as small community initiatives during his college years gradually grew into Green Pencil Foundation — an organisation working at the grassroots with government schools and underserved communities across climate education, sustainability, health awareness, and social inclusion.
Green Pencil Foundation’s eco-libraries nurture young minds through collective learning and climate action.
Living and studying in Delhi–NCR, Sandy saw how climate change and air pollution were shaping childhoods — particularly for children whose families could not afford air purifiers, masks, or protected indoor spaces. Instead of framing pollution only as a crisis, the Foundation chose to frame it as a learning opportunity.
“The idea wasn’t only to explain that polluted air is harmful, but to show children how small, everyday actions can help them protect themselves and their environment,” says Sandy.
Hence, a pencil was drawn towards change, not in protest banners or policy papers, but inside school spaces where children spend most of their day. Spaces where learning could quietly turn into responsibility, and later into hope.
A green library for kids
Sandy often says the choice was intentional.
Children spend nearly half their day inside school walls and within those walls, the library is usually seen as the quietest, most overlooked corner, a room associated with silence, routine, and, often, disinterest.
That is exactly why Sandy chose it.
“Libraries are where imagination is supposed to begin,” he explains. “So why not make them inspiring again?”
Instead of starting with protests, petitions, or policy papers, Green Pencil Foundation chose an unexpected entry point for climate action: government school libraries. In many schools, these spaces were either missing altogether or locked rooms which were rarely used.
Sandy and his team saw possibility where others saw neglect. Not just to build reading rooms, but to transform them into living classrooms — spaces where children don’t just read about sustainability, but practise it every day.
Today, four eco-friendly libraries are operational across government schools in Faridabad. Two are located in Village Chhainsa, Block Ballabgarh — at the Government Senior Secondary School and the Government Girls Senior Secondary School. The other two are located at NIT-5, Faridabad, at the Government Boys Senior Secondary School, and in Sector 7, Village Sihi, at the Government Senior Secondary School.
Once-overlooked libraries, now green spaces where children learn to care for the planet.
Step inside, and these libraries immediately break the stereotype.
They are not silent rooms lined only with shelves. Instead, the walls bloom with vertical gardens made from discarded plastic bottles that students collected from home, cut, painted, filled with soil, and planted with care.
Children sit on bamboo furniture, not plastic chairs. Metal bins placed across the room encourage waste segregation. A digital reading corner nudges students towards paperless learning, while an eco-book bank promotes sharing over consumption. For adolescent girls, a sanitary pad vending machine quietly ensures dignity, access, and inclusion.
Every element is intentional, and every corner carries a message.
“For students studying in government schools, an N95 mask or an air purifier is a luxury. Our first step was to make them aware of why these resources matter, and then help them understand — through experiential learning and practical knowledge, how plastic waste and climate change actively drive pollution,” Sandy adds.
Inside these libraries, learning unfolds in layers. Students participate in expert-led, nature-immersive sessions, followed by classroom discussions that ground experience in theory.
Pairing with our team, they paint classroom walls with messages about climate change. They learn waste segregation by practising it daily at school and thereafter applying that knowledge back at home as well. They turn plastic waste into planters and watch life grow from it.
Perhaps the most powerful transformation is how these schools, which once did not even have functional libraries, now house green, eco-friendly spaces — alive with plants, curiosity, and possibility.
A library that feels like studying in a garden
Most students who use these eco-friendly libraries are between 11 and 17 years old. Learning about nature is exciting, but being surrounded by it makes the experience far more meaningful.
Surrounded by plants, light, and fresh air, children learn not just science, but responsibility towards the planet.
For 13-year-old Naitik, a student at the Government Senior Secondary School in Chhainsa, Faridabad, the idea of a library has completely changed. Earlier, it was just another room. Now, he says, it’s the place he and his friends look forward to the most.
“I love that we planted trees while building the eco-friendly library,” Naitik shares. “Studying while feeling the cool breeze from the plants is the best part. I love sitting there with my friends.”
While Naitik had some awareness of climate change earlier, his understanding deepened through Green Pencil Foundation’s regular sustainability workshops. These sessions explain air pollution, climate change, waste management, and water conservation in simple, practical ways.
Children learn what PM2.5 actually means, why masks matter, how plants absorb carbon, and how waste segregation works — not through lectures alone, but through activities, discussions, and hands-on tasks.
“We ask children to notice nature in their everyday lives — the sky, water, plants, animals — and then reflect on why these things matter to them,” says Sandy.
Some classes are conducted outdoors, immersed in nature, while others use smart boards and digital tools — making lessons engaging, accessible, and easier to understand.
For students like Naitik, learning doesn’t stop at the library door. It quietly finds its way into daily life.
“We now use jute bags when we go out to buy vegetables,” he says. “I understand how harmful plastic is for the Earth, and this is something I’ve started practising at home.”
Raja, 15, from the same school, proudly points to the vertical garden as his favourite feature of the library. What makes it special, he says, is that students built it themselves.
“We used one-litre plastic bottles,” Raja tells The Better India. “We cut them, painted them, made holes, added compost and soil, planted saplings, and then hung them.”
Painted by students, these walls turn climate education into something children can experience beyond textbooks.
Sitting on bamboo chairs, breathing cleaner air from the plants, and learning amid greenery has helped students like Raja realise that nature is not something to be understood only through textbooks.
Whether it’s the science of plants, the art of pollination, or the urgency of the climate crisis, these lessons come alive when they are experienced firsthand.
Over time, these shifts become visible. Students begin separating wet and dry waste, questioning plastic use, planting saplings at home, and choosing steel bottles over plastic. They understand that trees are not just decorative — they are essential.
“These may seem like small changes,” Sandy says, “but they stay with children for life.”
Today, Raja and many others like him are planting saplings at home and dreaming of a greener India — one where every child gets the chance to breathe clean air.
Breathing towards a better tomorrow
For Sandy, success isn’t measured by scale, but by impact — by how many climate heroes emerge, how deeply behaviour shifts, and how much clean oxygen these spaces generate for children who deserve the same privileges as those in elite schools.
In the past year alone, Green Pencil Foundation has reached over 1,200 students through sustainability workshops and 2,250 students through four eco-friendly libraries in Faridabad — planting not just trees, but lifelong habits.
As these children learn to breathe easier and think greener, Sandy hopes to take this model beyond schools — into colleges, police stations, and government offices, using everyday spaces to nurture change, one breath, one child, and one future at a time.
“Nothing stands above nature. We are part of it, and it is because of nature that we exist. We can buy many things, but we cannot create oxygen or food the way nature does,” says Sandy.
All images courtesy Sandy Khanda
