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| The team on its regular Bird-watching outing |
Vanam Foundation is a trust
working in the fringe of Bandipura Tiger Reserve whose objective is to promote
socially just and ecologically sustainable development. It strives for the
harmony between Man and Nature with strictly local emphasis. It operates from a
tiny village called Lokkere and primly focuses upon the education and well-being of children in the locality. For more than a decade now they have invested
their time and energy into one govt. school in Mangala, a revenue village that
must be approached through Bandipura National Park. Most of the students in the
school are from agrarian background and about a third belongs to the native
tribes of Kaadu Kuruba, Betta Kuruba and Soliga communities. Even the non
tribal villagers around the park are predominantly dependent on the forest for
their livelihood or are marginal farmers cultivating on dry land.
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| A painting on the School wall |
The Mangala Gram Panchayat
consists of 6 revenue villages divided into 15 hamlets. Of them 8 are exclusively
made up of tribal populations, 1 is of exclusively dalit and 6 are of mixed
populations. The Gram Panchayat has six schools. The resources in these schools
were very limited and seldom the teachers moved out towards bigger towns as
fast as they came. This used to be the scenario till as recent as 2005, when
wildlife enthusiast Nithila Baskaran first visited this area. The
Govt. Higher Primary school at Mangala had a dilapidated building with holes in
the ceilings. The furniture were rickety absolutely unusable. Nithila was then working
with ACTIONAID doing community-based rehabilitation and post
disaster rehabilitation when she chance visited the Mangala Government School.
Her humanitarian conciderations for the needy got evoked.
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| This file picture depicts the wonderful surrounding of the school |
And then on it was
not easy for her to sidestep the ‘people’s issues’ that were weighing down the
conservation efforts in the National Park.
On further visits it was clear to her that the high attrition rate of
teachers and children from these schools reinforced the vicious cycle of
high illiteracy in the locality. Also, Chamarajnagar district had a
low literacy rate of 50.87% and was doused in severe poverty. After
meeting the teachers and the students in the school, Nithila realized that
there was tremendous need to work with the community and believed that she has
to start her work with the children first.
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| Some Nature Games in the wilderness |
Nithila was born in a
place called Dharapuram, close to the city of Coimbatore in Tamilnadu. However she moved every couple of years due
to her father’s career and lived all over India. She grew up spending a
lot of time in the forests of South India especially Bandipur.
Her father is a multi faceted person who attained highest order in civil
service. Along with his strict schedules he was an avid traveler, writer and a
conservationist.
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| Children given an opportunity to explore a stream bed |
His writings on travel, art, archeology, Natural history and
Plant sciences are familiar to the readers of The Hindu and Front line. Both of
her parents being birders the family has spent all their holidays in the
wild, every where their carrier took them to. Naturally her love and passion
for wilderness and especially this area became an important part of her life.
It continually brought her back to the region to photograph wildlife and enjoy
the beauty of the forests. She was now back to the same place with a couple of
degrees and several years of work experience-field work, research, writing and
so on….so it was time for her to decided to do something.
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| Celebrating World Environment Day through learning to Reuse.. |
She began talking with the local
people who were struck by the many challenges faced by the community in regards
to their children’s education. The student/teacher ratio
was extraordinarily high, good teachers did not want to teach in such a
remote place. It was difficult for the children to get to school where they had
no desks or teaching aids nor toys. And there was no access to any alternative
schooling systems.
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| Ravi demonstrates Bird-box making |
To further complicate the matters, there was an enormous
disconnect between the children and the forests around them despite the fact
that almost half of the children came from tribal communities, who traditionally
lived off the forests. They rarely entered the park since they were relocated
outside the forests. Efforts or concerns to conserve the land and
wildlife around them were low.
Nithila realized she had landed
on an opportunity to do something different that would change their life.
Although she loved the work she did with Actionaid, she wanted to do more
hands-on work and be in the field. It was her chance encounter with the
community and Mangala Government School that inspired her to found Vanam.
By working with the government
and other non-profit organizations, Vanam has helped increase student
attendance and achievement, gender equality, wildlife and environmental conservation,
and overall improvement of life for the communities that live around Bandipur
National Park.
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| Children having a hands on experience.... |
Apart from providing
infrastructural support to the school it has given immense support through
providing for voluntary assistant teachers for years together. As a sort of
goodwill gesture the trustees provide festive lunch on many occasions in the
school. To Anthoniamma, a crusading force in drawing children from all the
tribal settlements to the school, Vanam is a sort of the ‘go to people’ on any
emergency in the school. Also they give a lot of emphasis to nature education
in the schools and have entrusted a person to exclusively look after Nature
related activities in the school. He promotes science, wildlife and
environmental conservation in the school by coordinating workshops and
enrichment programs for the children to learn about the forest around them.
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| A file grab of an Outdoor Class 2008 |
Vanam provides scholarships to
students in order to encourage them continue their education beyond high
school. The addition of a school bus to this govt. school has made one of
the biggest differences in the turnout of the children as they now have a safe way
to get to school. The school bus picks up 75 children traveling distance
of 60 km every day. Before the school bus, children had to walk miles in the
forest and sometimes risking wild elephants. The school bus, though not donated
by Vanam, is successfully run by Vanam. The fuel costs, the ware and tare of
the tiers and all unforeseen costs are met by Vanam. These indirect interventions
in the school could go a long way in curbing the dropout rates in the schools
of Mangala Gram Panchayat. And the enrichment of the curriculum with exposure
visits and extra curricular activities will definitely tilt equations in the
community.
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| The Happy and cheerful team at the Interpretation Center at Mudumalai. |
-Manu K
