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Quest
Rooting for nature
Benita Sen
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An eight-day camp in Kalimpong taught children to be responsible for their actions. It created an awareness among them on protecting the environment.
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It is a tree like no other. It is a tree about fulfilling promises. At the end of an eight-day environmental awareness camp held in hilly Kalimpong, students and their parents pondered about doing their bit for the environment and came up with a variety of resolutions which they pinned to a colourful tree named Sankalp Vriksha (Tree of Resolutions). For the last three years, Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (Atree) and the School for Vocational Studies and Languages (SVSL), have tried to put to good use the two-month long winter vacation in West Bengal's Kalimpong region by holding a camp for children. This winter camp included about 175 children and 25 facilitators drawn from college students, teachers and scientists. The camp is about creating an awareness of the environmental problems that plague the region. Says Priyadarshani Shreshtha, who organises these camps for rural children, "We want to make children aware of local environmental issues." The first two days of the camp were devoted to five sessions that covered issues from flora, fauna, insects and environmental issues to waste management and matters concerning a "green" consumer.
The sessions, the field surveys and the nature walk to the river Relli were woven around local problems like deforestation, landslides, water scarcity, soil pollution, rising consumerism, waste management and even the use of MSG (mono-sodium glutamate) in the favourite local snack. . "The focus is always on the individual's contribution," says Jaya Thapa, the Atree representative in Kalimpong. "We like to work with children on issues where an individual can make a change." The children carried out surveys on domestic spending patterns, on the efficacy of the ban on plastic, the use of local and branded products and to assess the influence of advertisements on consumers.
The two organisations together came up with Green Minds, an environmental education handbook addressing local problems. .
"With experience and exposure, we have designed the material in such a way that even though the environmental education teacher is constrained in school, we can fill the gap," says Yusuf Simick of SVSL. Gradually, through the camps and their other work with student groups, an awareness is being built up in whichwill form pressure groups that would, for instance, guide the municipality to segregate waste.
And Simick ought to know the value of such awareness asKalimpong is one of the few places to have banned plastic thanks to the efforts of Atree, SVSL and municipality officials.
At the end of the eight-day camp, participants learnt that individuals are important. It required little prodding to pin their resolutions on the Sankalp Vriksha, promising to take practical, feasible steps from using re-chargeable batteries to switching off lights.
Simick and Thapa's Nature Walk in 10 Steps discusses issues from plant and insect life and their problems and threats, to birds, waste management, noise pollution...
As Simick and Thapa say, it all begins with a single step.
Women's Feature Service
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