Maneka Gandhi, Minister for Women and Child Development, on Thursday visited the College of Defence Management, Secunderabad.
She addressed the course participants of Higher Defence Management Course Serial No.13 (HDMC 13) and their spouse on an important topic of 'Women and Child Development and Management of Stray Animals'.
HDMC is a prestigious course comprising 152 officers (Colonels and equivalent ranks of all three services) including from friendly foreign countries.
In the address, she drew upon her childhood memories of growing up in Military Cantonments and identified with the audience based on her own familial connections with the armed forces.
She remembered how her mother would pledge to make the Cantonment and the surroundings 'cleaner and greener' and how it remained a major source of inspiration and memory which guided her own values and activism.
Maneka also spoke of how important role was played by the ladies in the armed forces and how they can be role models in sphere of women and child development and management of stray dogs.
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She exhorted audience to remember that every person consumes equivalent of seven trees per year of his age and hence it should be moral obligation by all citizens to plant equivalent trees as return to Mother Earth.
She exhorted the ladies to start a mission to plant trees with commercial and health benefits such Tamarind tree and coined the word 'Mission Imli'.
Among the audience were 30 ladies, spouses of the participant officers of HDMC who are undergoing a nine week structured program on 'Social Awareness & Life Skills for Responsible Citizenship' (SALSRC).