Summer Camp Chronicle 3

Summer camp to promote Organic Farming:

Karnataka is diverse and rich in its socio-geographic and cultural entity. From Northern most tip at Bidar to Chamarajanagar you find several bio-geographic variations and in accordance dialects of Kannada. As an environment educator if you walk into a new region, you are compelled to cope up with local dialect along with environmental issues of the region. But at extreme borders of the state the dialect turns into a different language altogether.

Marthalli in Kollegal Taluk is one such region where a vast majority of the population speaks Tamil.  Beyond that they belong to families in crisis owing to migrant labor. Women empowered families are call of the order. The fathers have left for good or to take some menial job in a big town on either side of the border. As a linguistic predicament their primary schools could have Kannada, Tamil and English mediums. When the children pass through different class they will have to learn in different languages. Such drastic switching over of language in their formative age would retard socialization skills owing to poor communication proficiency. The small seed of inferiority in them will get deep rooted and will start showing off over the surface. During a camp when they come together with other children, they realize their differences for the first time. Handling children with such issues become a tricky issue.

Rajan and Valli of Anisha a trust they set up for the research and propagation of Organic Farming have been striving hard to put some solidarity and courage into these village children. They have tried out spoken English, Grammar and Etiquette with socializing skills in the camps they organized in the yester years. Based on the success of the year long Kitchen Garden movement through Nature Clubs in Schools, which they carried out in 16 schools of Martalli cluster, they decided to take on their prime agenda for the main course of this year’s camp. This 4 days summer camp was focused upon Organic farming. Apart from socializing activities, the children were exposed to a number of organic and permaculture techniques. The campus is rigged up for the demonstration of various concepts of permaculture and Sustainable life styles and came in handy to undertake suitable activities. Seed collection, soil preparation and concepts of food forest were dealt in detail.

Summer Camp to understand science and appreciate Natural history:

The Regional Museum of Natural history regularly conducts two such camps in their campus annually; one in the summer and another during winter. Instead of calling it a camp they properly call it as Summer Nature Study program. This is one program that stands out from all other summer programs in the town. Apart from the uniqueness in its content, it is free of cost. But the children of Mysore seldom make use of the rare opportunity. The seats are minimal and selection is through some sort of test. There would be two categories based on the age and named as Green Cubs and Green Teens and the activities seldom different. However for certain lectures and outings they both may be combined.

The beautiful campus, the very best of museum and the auditorium are all advantages that are unparalleled by any other organization that thinks of a program for children. Apart from the gallery visit, they regularly take the participants for a day long field visits. They may be a place of interest for Nature studies or museum or a laboratory. This year the teams visited other museums at Mysore to understand their intentions and approaches to understand Nature and science.