Team: Amit Awasthi – Conservation Officer
Sampathlal Dhurve – Field assistant
Highlights
· 3 awareness programmes on vegetable farming
· 3 compost pit prepared at 3 villages
· 2 voluntary work project programmes for community assistance – one to clear area next to hand pump and one to clear road of wild growth
· Socio-economic surveys updated in 3 villages
· 2 anti-plastic programmes in 2 village
· 3 unemployed youths placed in resorts
· 1 capacity-building training programme for women’s self-help group (SHG)
· Environment education programme conducted in 10 schools - attended by 264 students
Conservation
As part of our programme to help villagers
find alternative livelihood options which will reduce their dependence on
forests, we have been encouraging villagers, in our area of operations around
Kanha, to take up vegetable farming. Due to the presence of several resorts
around Mocha and a steady flow of tourists, there is good demand for fresh
vegetables. Over the past year, we have assisted around 15 villagers in taking
up vegetable farming and they are earning around 500-1,000 rupees a week in
additional income. The vegetable patches are typically of small size and
located in the backyards of the residences. Some villagers have now got enough
confidence to expand and are planning to use part of their farm land for this
activity. To encourage more villagers to take up this activity, we conducted
three awareness programmes in September at Kutwahi, Batwar and Patpara. Details
are given in the table above.
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Kutwahi - Awareness programme on vegetable farming.
Forest Guard Pahel Singh Marko next to Amit Awasthi
|
As part of our programme to
promote organic farming to reduce the impact of chemical fertilizers on areas
adjoining forest areas, we helped 3 villagers prepare compost pits. The details
are given on the above table.
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| Chapri - compost pit being dug by Bhagwat Dhurve |
During September, we also organized two voluntary
work programmes (voluntary community work). On September 12, Amit and
Sampath led a team of 12 people comprising 8 unemployed youths and 4 school
children in a programme to clean the area around a hand pump. Due to heavy
rains, wild growth had proliferated around the pump and water was stagnating.
Access to the hand pump was also difficult. Our team removed the wild growth,
cleared the area and also cleaned a soak pit next to the hand pump.
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| Above: wild growth around the hand pump, Samaiya |
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| The area after cleaning wild growth |
On September 18, Amit and Sampath led a
team of 13 unemployed youths in a programme to clear wild growth from the main
road leading into Kursitola. Besides making movement difficult, the wild growth
was also providing refuge to snakes and scorpions. Our team cleared away the
wild growth, thus reducing the chances of people stepping on snakes and killing
them. Photos below.
On September 13, our
team organized an anti-plastic programme at Patpara. Amit spoke to the students
of the village school about the harmful impact of plastic/polythene on the
environment and motivated them to remove such litter from the village. The
students went around the village, collecting plastic and polythene litter/waste,
which were then buried in a pit on the outskirts of the village. A similar
programme was organized on September 15 at Samaiya.
Below: Photos of the clean-up drive in Patpara.
Education
During the month our
team organized environment education programmes in 11 schools in the villages
in our area of operations.
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| Nature education programme at EGS School, Chapri |
Employment Cell
We helped three youths get jobs during the month of September.
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| Pratap Uikey of Kutwahi, who got a job at Green Valley Resort, Mocha with our help |
SHG capacity building training
programme
As part of our
assistance to villagers in getting alternative livelihoods, we helped women in 3
villages set up SHGs and organized a workshop in Manegaon in which they were taught how to
maintain documents, conduct operations of the SHGs and were also introduced to
possible activities that they could take up. The workshop was organized jointly
with Ajiwika Mission – a project by the Madhya Pradesh state government to help
empower women. Photo of the workshop below.
During the month, our
team continued to update our database on unemployed youths in the villages in
our area of operations. This survey will help us work out a proper strategy of
introducing alternative livelihood options in the area, based on the interests
and skills of the youths.
Photo below: Sampathlal collects data on unemployed youths, Manegaon
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