Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Conservation Education Meet

I was a part of a 2 day workshop on Conservation Education organized at Navadarshanam (http://www.navadarshanam.org/) by ATREE (http://www.atree.org/) during December 2008. This space I take to share learning assimilated by way of questions, ideas and confusions that I encountered in course of the experience sharing by participants during the event. This was in course of the presentations as also the informal discussions that took place with cups of the wonderful tea and ladoos that we had during those 2 days.

The venue, 60 kms from Bangalore ...
One of the initial lines that struck me was on the discussion on text books on environment education. They are based on the “utility” approach and this approach being a part of the environment education curriculum was in itself a dichotomy and the example of cow said it all. The text books teach “the cow gives us milk”; now ~ no cow on the blessed planet does gives milk willingly it is we who look at it in the fashion; look at cow not as an animal that is a part of the ecosystem like us but as a body is meant to give us milk!

Usage of senses was another important point that was raised. We today stress only on one sense : that of seeing with our eyes; and this to such an extent that we have put other senses "out of sight"! The suggestion was to take students to the “outdoors” in course of conservation education programmes and have them undertake actions like feeling leaves and hugging trees. I wondered on the need to understand “education” better ~


A workshop session in progress

Giving participants free time to think and ponder on their own in course of conservation education programmes was an activity that I found very interesting and an activity that would be very invigorating to understand. I myself appreciate space and time provided in course of programmes that I am a part of!

A similar point that was raised pertained to the practise of rewarding students. The outputs of students’ efforts were published in form of a book, giving them due credits and a programme was organized where they got to talk of the efforts and deliberate on the actions undertaken by them; this I would agree, as was discussed, would be of greater interest to students than certificates. The idea i understood is to treat students as participants and not as children!

Viewing pictures in one of the presentations I realized that scale and quality need not necessarily be inversely proportional to each other and that we could organize conservation education programmes with large number of participants and yet successfully retain their interest levels. This question has been pestering me for quite some time for when we work at a smaller scale (in course of conservation education programmes) certain actions are beyond us and in cases were we attempted to augment the scale beyond a point we had succeeded in organizing an entertainment event.

A stunning poster displayed at the venue by a participant

WWF camps was an issue that was raised in course of more than one presentation. One point of deliberation on importance of WWF nature camps was put forth by saying that many of the conservationists of today were "products" of these camps (the camps having played a crucial role in their youth). The camps thus playing a very crucial conservation education role. The other view was that while these camps were good the participants in these camps were doled out names in dozens, names of birds, mammals and other wildlife in a fashion that they did not bother to remember any nor get space to ponder on what they came across ~

Material generating and dissemination were also discussed. What emerged was the need to undertake exhaustive research before designing materials as also to have a strategy for effective dissemination of the material produced.

Expressing sincere gratitude to ATREE, Sunita and all the participants for the wonderful experience !

Visit to another zoo

I have been visiting Zoos, during recent months, with multiple objectives of comprehending their potential as tools for our conservation education programme and to help with identification of species towards the wildlife assessments that we have lined up for 2009. Baroda Zoo in Gujarat I visited on 25th December during my visit to the city; pleased to share few images.

its a little lonely in here today ...


hmm... the winters are getting warmer...


now....where has my shadow gone again....


gosh... after making rules for us .... dont they know the rules they need to follow ....

the stately Baroda Musuem (one of the oldest structures built in india towards being a museum) that overlooks the Zoo ....