National Young Environmentalists conference (YEC) 
National Bal Bhavan organizes a National Conference for Young Environmentalists each year. National Bal Bhavan is an institution which aims at enhancing the creative potential of children (5 to 16 years) by providing them various activities, opportunities and common platform to interact, experiment, create and perform according to their age, aptitude and ability. The purpose of the conference and other environment related programmes is to make the children environmentally conscious, develop active interest in specific issues of environment so as to become caring and responsible citizens of the earth. They also carry forward the messages/information learnt during such programmes to their native places.
The theme related information that the children are expected to bring with them is communicated to them thru their Bal Bhavans. They are invited to a selected venue where they interact with the best experts available and are also taken on field trips to the theme related places. State Bal Bhavans have played an important role in arranging the Conference in the chosen venue.
Till date about 24 Conferences have been organised on various themes and each was conducted in a theme related venue across India in some of the most beautiful geographically placed regions. To name a few themes, these are State of India’s environment. Participants of various states of India wrote a small chapter about the state of the local environment that is of their state. Other issues that have been discussed are water, wild life, tropical forests, deserts, islands, oceans, Wetlands, Valleys, Rivers, Environmental activism, Guardians of Nature, Traditional knowledge, Energy, Climate change, Reuse, Reduce Recycle, Sun, Man and Nature (Life of the Tribals in India) etc. Location of various Conferences have been Uttarakhand, Odisha, Rajasthan, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Diu, Daman, Delhi.
Organisations like the Centre for Environment Education, TERI, Development Alternatives, NTPC, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Centre for Management of Degraded Ecosystems, National Museum of Natural History have supported many of these programmes.
NYEC 2016-17
24th March to 26th March 2017.
Theme:- Smart Cities- Sustainable cities
Venue:-Centre for Environment Education
Some of the flagship programmes like Smart Cities, Swachch Bharat Mission are integrated into Bal Bhavan programmes. The theme of this year’s conference was Smart cities-Sustainable cities. More than 150 children and 30 teachers from 26 districts of various States of India participated in the conference that was organised in Ahmadabad at Centre for Environment Education which is a centre of Excellence, It made the entire conference a joyful learning experience for the children in this 3 days conference. Children were also taken to Adalaj, BRT corridor and Gandhi Ashram.
The issues discussed were Urban Environment, Climate change, Health, Water, Governance and Waste.
The following dignitaries inaugurated the conference on 24th March in the CEE auditorium and the keynote address was delivered by Smt. Nishaben Zha, Municipal Councillor of Ahmadabad. Shri Kartikeya V. Sarabhai, Director of CEE translated the keynote address for the benefit of all the children present from various states of India. Other dignitaries were:-
Shri Jawahar Mehta , Chairperson, Amreli Bal Bhavan
Shri Mansukh Bhai Joshi , Chairperson, Rajkot Bal Bhavan.
National Bal Bhavan thanks and is highly grateful to CEE, Ahmedabad, Amreli Bal Bhavan and Rajkot Bal Bhavan for their support in this conference.
