Questions and plans ~

Initial interactions had team-members (conservation education team) share of their activities and me ask them questions. These would help me understand the program (including people associated) and would be pertinent given that  

the team, language and landscape were fresh for me! (We had a discussion on my asking questions including my saying that I quite like doing so and have been told I overdo it at times; but that I will skip for now).

Next I shared briefly my journey with conservation education.  I looked at partners and activities; how I had learnt from experiences and as a corollary affected revision.

One of the activities, film-screening, we delved on at length. This consisted of our seeing the film Sekhar Dattatri’s “Save our Sholas”, team dividing into 2 groups and discussing how it could be ‘shown’ in the 2 different settings team works in and ended with me sharing of how we used to screen films. Team presentations were interesting and suggestions on how the film could be interpreted include –

Group one

• Drawing (scenes or species from the movie)
• Role-play (pluck an issue from movie and design a role-play around it)
• Debate (in this case of this film: for and against dams)
• Drama (story-line based on movie)
• Maps (including changes in the landscape)
• Worksheet

Group two

• Interactions with the participants
• What is the movie about?
• Did you enjoy the movie? Why?
• Did the movie convey any message?
• Would you want to see it again?

Then I shared of how we used to take it up (adding that all actions would location specific and there is not one best manner to implement!); actions include -

• Select film relevant to larger topic then being discussed
• Screenings at office
• Make notes
• Identify species and note their local names
• Carry field-guides and put them to use during screening
• Record re-actions
• Connect with local issues
• Plan portion(s) to be shown and points to take break at

“Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.” 

― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

As one of the steps towards setting up a commonly acceptable goal (in the coming days) we felt the need to understand how the team pictured the program evolving. This would help the future course of action as also elucidate gaps (if any) between how the management and the team perceived the program.

The team divided into 2 groups; one worked on “Where we are” or actions team currently takes up and the other on “Where we want to go” in other words what the team sees itself as doing 2 years down the line! While the time drew the boundary of the discussion area we also brought in some structure to the discussions by outlining parameters that the discussion would focus on. This was to help discussion from getting too broad as also provide areas for comparison. We were clear that we would not get stuck with semantics but focus on getting pointers to take the program further.

Share the indicators below

• Geographical area
• Partners
• Team
• Skill-sets
• Activities
• External help
• Recording and reporting
• Evaluation

The presentations and discussions that followed were interesting to say the least. Issues that the team proposed ranged from expanding efforts geographically to making efforts to raise resources locally to engaging with the hospitality industry to reduce their carbon foot-print!

After initial round of interactions we accompanied the team to places where action took place, primarily with children, within and beyond schools. I do not go into details of where we went and the actions we took up but rather share some questions (yes again!) that we discussed after the visits.

Most events are organized by one person; would it help to have someone tuned in conservation education to accompany this person? Activities the only person takes up currently include attendance, report, photography and interactions. Second person could help keep students interested during the entire duration besides noting their reactions and of course giving peer feedback.

Would it help to share of our plan with schools in advance? We need to share of our proposed actions with our partners and seek their inputs.

Could we put in time with teachers and principal during each trip to the school and attempt to build a rapport? Even if we are on a good equation with half of them the program would benefit.

Could we have more sharing within the team? We could use the existing platform of meetings and this could be very well done outside of formal structures as well. 

(Got a feed-back yesterday that the earlier blog was far more interesting! Don’t know if it helped to finally write this down ~)