It gives us a lot of joy to share with you that the Pench E-Base program was featured in Canada’s ‘Natural Life’ magazine just last month. We have worked tenaciously over the last three years and we have begun seeing changes, big and small. Whether it is students making reading a habit, or them finding solutions to their waste in school, they are being transformed into conscious, independent youth of tomorrow.
Writes Monica Szczupider about the changing face of conservation in our times, “Gone is the day when environmental movement polarized the social structure, pitting non- conformist hippie against upper middle class consumer; these days they are often found inside the same skin. But according to Conservation Wildlands, environmentalism can no longer be an extra curricular activity available only to the middle class and above. Sustainable living must be implemented on the front lines- into the precariously balanced societies straddling a disappearing world, and an exploding one, where people share their homes with the most endangered species on our planet.”
Against this backdrop, the E-Base program and CWT’s sustainable livelihoods program are of vital importance. They create more aware, economically sound and self reliant communities that have the sensitivity towards their surroundings, the home of the big cats and countless other fauna.
While the E-Base program moulds the future leaders of the community, the livelihoods program equips the community members with skills and provides market linkages. One of our programs, a tailoring program for women of three villages in Pench, Maharashtra is in full swing. The Silai School in collaboration with Usha International Limited runs a program that will be helpful for the beneficiary population of close to 83 women in three villages in Pench, Maharahstra. Market linkages provided by us ensure a steady income for these women. Our objective behind this intervention is to provide an additional source of income to at least 20 families through market based product development by the end of 2015.
Have a read of this beautifully articulated and extremely relevant article by Monica Szczupider here.