Another Eventful year at the E-Base
Yet another eventful year at the E-Base has passed. Last month, the E-Base program completed four years. In the company of our wonderful students and forest guards, we celebrated four years of learning and creating appreciation for wildernesses and the tigers that reside in them. This year saw our students improve their reading skills, explore the biodiversity around them in more depth and learn yoga. Here is a quick glimpse of our anniversary celebration in Pench.
Inquiry and discovery are a huge part of the learning process at the E-Base.
A Planet for All: Workshop by Priyanka Pandit in association with ‘Camlin Kids Power’
A modern day movement in support of the planet began in this month close to half a decade ago. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had awoken so many of the youth, and increasingly degraded air and surroundings lead to more people raising concern and springing into action. Environmental health was, for the first time, a part of tea time discussions of the common man and the agendas of the politicos. That was 1970. This is 2015.
Despite increased awareness and more inclusive action to address environmental issues, we are, unfortunately, still in the midst of a climatic crisis, one that leaves us with a precarious future. One of the biggest reasons for this climatic turmoil is deforestation. However, it is not only the risks of climatic turmoil that we face due to deforestation, it is also a loss of our food and water security. Ahead of Earth Day on the 22nd of April, this workshop by Priyanka Pandit was about this very concern: loss of our green spaces.
As part of Kokuyo Camlin’s ‘Camlin Kids Power’ initiative, Camlin promotes awareness of burning social issues amongst underprivileged children through mediums such as music and art.
How glad we were to Priyanka and the folks from Camlin over to explain food chains, deforestation and food security with the help of a book and a guitar!
To begin with, Priyanka took the students on a tour of the forest. A forest comprises of producers, consumers, decomposers and the likes. The consumers are herbivores and carnivores which are poles apart in every way, but still have one common link: the producer, our very own forest.
Priyanka explaining the significance of forests to the students.
What’s causing that pollution?: Workshop by Reniscience Education
Everyday, we expel unnatural and harmful elements into our surroundings. In the beginning, they are nothing more than a mere inconvenience, however, over time, we experience the full effects of our actions.
Whether it is littering in our immediate environment, creating a ruckus in the neighbourhood, contaminating our water bodies or simply putting into the atmosphere gases that do no good for us, we pollute in many ways.
This month, the students learnt about the pollution around them in this workshop by Reniscience Education. Sangita Kapadia and Purvi Vora took the students out of the classrooms all around- into the village, by their lake, by the roads- to examine the impact through the pollution created in the village.
Through a pollution survey, the students were meant to identify the greatest sources of pollution and later, come up with solutions to best tackle the issue.
Students in the village of Kohka conducting the pollution survey.
A Changing World: Workshop on Climate Change by Pooja Choksi
Our planet as it once began has been constantly undergoing changes. The only difference between the changes taking place in the last few centuries and those before that is that now these changes are instigated by man’s actions.
The students know one thing like a gospel truth: life cannot exist without oxygen. It was time to however introduce them to other atmospheric gases playing equally significant roles in the upkeep of our planet.
Students understanding the task at hand. The atmosphere consists of 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 per cent oxygen and 1 per cent of all other gases and water vapour. The students were meant to correctly label the pie chart.
Unleashing the Actors Inside: Workshop on Performing Arts
Amrita Lalljee, Amba Jhala and Anirudh Nair were down in Pench to conduct a very unique workshop this month. The trio, established names in the field of performing arts, visited our students with the motive of making them have some fun and simultaneously helping them find their voices.
Our students walked into the E-Base, unaware of what we had in store for them for the next three days. The workshop encompassed all kinds of learning and fun, from laughing out loud to performing skits based on personal experiences.
Performing Arts is strongly linked to building one’s confidence and opening up. Our aim is to help our students not only find their voice to make them confident community leaders but also identify performing arts as a strong medium of expression and raising awareness.
Our students in an exercise that involved laughing their hearts out! Yes, it works wonders to them open up.
The Assault on the Stratosphere: Workshop on the Atmosphere by Reniscience Education
A tour of the atmosphere by Sangita Kapadia and Purvi Vora of Reniscience Education was in store for our students recently.
Sangita Kapadia with the students at the E-Base.
The many faces of Pench
Pench is beautiful throughout the year.
How do we vouch for that?
Here is a selection of images from the time we have spent in this enchanting forest over the last three years. We are sure you will agree with us by the the time you reach the last photo.
In spring, Pench is abuzz with insects, birds chirping and the lovely Mahua in full bloom. The light smell of of the forest is carried about by the gentle breeze. This is a wonderful time when the summer heat is just beginning to set in.
Parakeets perched atop the Flame of the Forest.
Lessons from the Dodo: Workshop on extinct and endangered species by Leaps and Bounds
Even though we are unaware of the total number of species that exist on this planet, we do know that human activity is soon pushing our biodiversity in a corner, inducing high extinction rates.
Where Man meets Nature: Bittu Sahgal
India is one of the most biodiverse nations in the world. Though, we are fast losing this natural wealth on account of unchecked conventional forms of ‘development’.
Conserving our planet’s surviving biodiversity, in the face of today’s misguided developmental ambitions, is undoubtedly one of the most crucial challenges that threatens the very survival of life on earth. This battle is umbilically connected to the climate crisis that has now come to be accepted as a reality by even the most hard-headed economists and scientists.
