Vanam: a unison of Passion and Perseverance

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

The Happy and cheerful team at the Interpretation Center at Mudumalai. 

-Manu K