World Environment Day: It’s time to act with this environmental activist

A home is a place where you feel happy and safe and for us, our home is the environment. To preserve it, World Environment Day is celebrated every year on the 5th of June. It is celebrated all over the world to cherish the beauty of the environment and to encourage everyone on raising awareness and representing the significance of the environment. This day was first marked in 1974. The theme for this year is “Only One Earth”. It is to provide awareness to people about the extremes and importance of nature. The founder of Samkhya Foundation, Soumya Akshat has her perspective and insights toward nature. We gave her a platform to express her story on the occasion of World Environment Day.

Soumya Akshat is a sustainability influencer, who promotes healthy eco-friendly life practices to balance the human relationship with the environment. She is a naturopath and certified Yoga instructor, nature lover, and founder of Samkhya Foundation.

At one point, Soumya resigned from her prestigious job in the Financial and Banking industry after the birth of her son. She was upset and suffering from postpartum depression, thinking about doing something productive in her life. During that time, Soumya visited her mother’s place and saw her undergoing naturopathy treatment. Naturopathy treatment is a natural way of healing and something triggered her mind and she started inquiring about the same without knowing that this would be a turning point in her life. She began to learn the course, also she suffers from physical ailments, so she thought it would be helpful for her.

In the very first year of her naturopathy course, the topic that Soumya got for her project was organic farming. She started to read many books and studied past research. During preparation, she saw the other side of the coin where she saw real life, nature, the environment, and all the creatures of the earth and she realized how deep this topic is. The issue was so real, that it left a great impact on her. Soumya decided to take baby steps instead of not doing anything. In the year 2012, she started farming on the same premises of the vino ha ashram on the back side and gradually started working with farmers in villages in 2013. Simultaneously, she decided to register her own NGO and developed her technical skills in organic farming and gathering knowledge on environmental health. During this time, she conceived her second child.

After completing naturopathy, Soumya got blessed with two babies-one of her NGO “Samkhya Foundation” and her daughter “Arvika”. After her daughter’s birth, she spent a few months at home and prepared for NGO projects. On Arvika’s first birthday, instead of throwing a party, Soumya and her husband decided to celebrate her birthday by initiating the first project of the Samkhya Foundation, naming it after her daughter “Arvika”. Project Arvika involves Tree Plantation in Vadodara city. To date, they have planted 15000+ trees and initiated many environment-related projects, 200+ farmers have been shifted to organic farming, and Samkhya is now associated with many groups and corporates. The purpose of this initiative is to spread the message of low waste living and to connect humans to nature and its miracle. Soumya will continue with her motive to spread awareness of sustainable/regenerative practices to live a healthy life and adopt and execute these practices at a mass level.

Currently, the Samkhya foundation is working with 200+ farmers who have adopted organic farming and the farmers are not getting the actual worth of their organic produce. So trying to provide them a platform where end users can meet the farmers directly. Soumya believes in the concept of farm to table. She is planning to expand this through and these are some of the things she has planned.

• Collaboration with other NGOs, institute for awareness and selling of farmer’s product
• Awareness sessions in societies and educational centers
• Planning to organize organic and sustainable theme-based festivals 
• Also planning to develop an application for online selling and also providing offline touchpoint

Here are some more initiatives that they have implemented:

• Waste management awareness sessions and end-to-end solutions to it (society for educational institutes)
• Tree plantation, so far they have planted 15,000+ trees in Vadodara and nearby villages
• Pre-loved clothes distributed to needy
• Making Mitti Ganpati with natural colors
• Making short videos on daily sustainable life hacks for awareness is feasible, relatable, and makes a huge difference, which can reduce carbon footprint. 

Working for the past 10 years made her realize every time that we have only one earth. It’s a legacy that has to be passed to the next generation in the same glory that was passed to us by our ancestors. And for that, we all have to take action now. “Sustainability is not a choice, it’s a habit for a happy, healthy life. We should be conscious and responsible in our actions that make Mother Earth healthy and beautiful. Humans should know that we are part of the ecosystem not above it” said Soumya.

She wants to convey that taking the first step towards sustainability may be imperfect, but it’s necessary for our health and future generations. Apply the rule of refuse, reuse, and recycle, before buying anything ask one question to yourself; is this required or it’s just for fun or for mere small convenience. Start refusing plastic cutlery or start conserving RO waste water. Start your imperfect, perfect sustainable lifestyle and reduce your carbon footprint wherever you can.