In April, the E-Base had new students. This time the students weren’t the school children from villages around, but instead, their teachers. An insightful workshop with ‘iDesign Skills’ put into perspective the impact of the teaching skills and tools chosen in a classroom.
Starting off with how to break up a text into different components depending on their function.
The E-Base is close to completing three years this year. The E-Base workshops have had a considerable impact on the students in Pench. This year, we have taken a moment to step back and look at some fundamental concerns which we could address through the E-Base and which will ultimately enhance the E-Base experience for children from the villages around Pench.
Within two days, we will be going live with our campaign to raise funds for an E-Base Library.
Light is the only source of energy at the E-Base, so what more important workshop to have than that on light energy. Our students are experts at using solar panels and making the most of what light has to offer. However, this week they dwelled deeper into phenomena related to light.
The children become amateur naturalists this weekend spent exploring their forests. There are often flora and fauna that the students overlook in their day to day life as neighbours of the forest and this workshop helped point out all of those.
We may have been off to a slow start because of the, may we say, ‘belligerent’ weather (For those who didn’t follow the diaries, yes, the weather was actually dead against us), but we were successful in the end. A section of our summer plants fared very well and our winter plants made us proud.
However, our real pride was the students of Turia Middle School. They showed responsibility and organisation one often doesn’t see in middle school students. We looked at the organic gardening project as a way to instill not only knowledge of organic cultivation but also of cooperation, team work and patience for mutual benefits.
To bid goodbye until we return with our diaries in the next academic year, we’d like to revisit some memories of our enjoyable yet very educational experience. Here are some of the photos that capture the pith of our organic experience.
After a busy month, we’re back to share some good news-
The methi, spinach and coriander have fared brilliantly! The spinach has already been picked for use once and is still going strong.
The palak patch on it’s second round.
Most of the villages surrounding the Pench Tiger Reserve, M.P. do not have organised methods of waste disposal.
While setting up the compost unit in Kohka Middle School , we advised the students to get together and collect the dry garbage and plastic in one location, so as to enable it to be dealt with in an organised fashion.
Just last month, we noticed that our advice has been heeded. There it was, a ‘kuda daan’ at the back of the school, next to the compost unit.
The pit student dug in the school to collect their garbage which is otherwise usually strewn around the school.
It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room- our ever growing population!
Jugaad came down all the way from Delhi to share with our students their brilliant creativity with waste. As closure to the waste module for the year, we brought in the experts to teach our students at the E-Base exactly what to do with the most commonly found waste in their houses!
Redecorating an old desk.