Sowing Native seeds in the young minds

ANISHA - A Campus full of hopes

Part 1 

As we prepare ourselves for the arrival of children from the remote village schools around Mahadeshwara Hills a flood of memories surge in my mind. We are getting ready for the culmination program of the series of event we carried out in about two dozen schools of three grama-panchayaths of Marthally, Ponnachi and Mahadeshwara hills. This is the time when the Education department gets stern in disapproving extra-curricular activity of any sort for any class in the Govt. schools! We had cautiously left out students appearing for any Board examination.  We did not want blames from anybody that our activities disturbed their academic pursuit in any way.

A simple yet rich kitchen garden at ANISHA

The project was to establish Organic Kitchen Garden in the schools and provide nutritional supplement in their Mid-day meal. Besides providing an opportunity to fix many nutrition based ailments in children we linked the exercise to science teaching. Many outdoor activities were designed to go along with the chores of sowing seeds and watering the plants. The necessary expertise was sourced from the solid experience that Anisha- a grassroots NGO that propagates Organic Farming among small and marginal farmers, had in the field. Rajan and Valli, the founder trustees of Anisha had researched methods of soil preparation and selection of crops for the area as well as worked hard passionately to rope in local community into their nature friendly farming practices.

 

Seed bank of posterity

Three years ago our mutual friend Mr. Gururaj Budhya introduced me to Rajan and Valli and proposed to be part of their outreach activities among children. Initially when I was called to interact with the children over week-ends, they saw children responding better to their initiatives. Soon we decided to pool in our mutual experiences in propagating Organic Farming among school children. A yearlong pilot project was worked out in sixteen schools of Marthally Panchayath. It had components ranging from teacher’s orientation program to practical Kitchen gardening sessions for children. After the completion of the project a third party evaluation was also called in. The suggestions made by the evaluating committee were seriously considered in envisaging the current project.

In the last week of July 2016, Valli called to fix up a date to kick start the program at the earliest as ‘aadi’ or the sowing season was fast getting over. I particularly wanted the program to have a solid launch and not an unceremonious beginning; some “higher up” in the education department must at least inaugurate the event. Beyond publicity or their personal charisma they would drive in some seriousness in the schools and the community. My long standing experience with the system told me how important any matter would become if you managed to get the signatory himself to grace your program besides providing a signature of authority in green ink upon your proposal.

 

Rajan with Children

We were looking forward with fingers crossed for the DDPI to inaugurate the program which she had given consent to. In fact things were not so easy from her point of view. She was carrying a transfer order; some people contemplated that it was a suspension order! Rajan and Valli were for not to go near the office for some time as the permission for the program was granted. They had spent several hours for many days at the DDPI’s office, beyond the office hours. They strongly felt it is better to set off with the program immediately and show results in the field. But the fact that Chamarajanagara District had a very dynamic and promising CEO was strongly at the back of my mind. I was slightly ambitious to have her come over to inaugurate. To meet her and get an acceptance to come over to the program would take up another few days. But Valli reasserted her stand. ‘Children have to be distributed with seeds after a daylong introductory session in the schools; by the time we go to the last school the season would be gone. There is no time to lose.’

 

A meeting to make the dreams come true

We immediately got an appointment with the CEO and she readily agreed to inaugurate the program on a shortest convenient for her. With her acceptance, came the compulsion for us to re tailor the inaugural program. The event had to be in a Govt. School, show case the real need of the program and be accessible to the guests as well as the crowd that had to be mustered to match the dignitaries on the dais. We had already fixed up Kadaburu GHPS as the venue. The Headmaster who was welcoming to us earlier when, the DDPI alone was the guest, started fretting and veining.  He thought we were drawing the hawks eye upon him just as he was about to complete his glorious service of a teacher. In three months time he would retire and didn’t want to meet the lady officer. Like many other headmasters and teachers he too was narrating versions of how strict new CEO was and how badly she had treated three teachers the moment she took over the office. Of course they were not emphasizing how loath they were and how they had kept their schools. Some teachers applauded her move and secretly revealed to us what the headmasters were uneasy about.

 

A kid with his fruit of labour

We personally visited other schools to invite the headmasters and students. It was astonishing to know that five headmasters had already applied for leave during the inaugural day and three more suggested that they would not be in town. It took a bit of a time for us to realize this hatred “up-and –coming” was out of their fear psychosis. In fact we tried to invite the PDO of the panchyath and the BEO; they were on some unofficially official duty and not available till the last minute.   

- Manu K