yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Demystifying Conservation Education A workshop at the  SCCS  on 28th September 2013 by Nimesh Ved   -  Pranav Trivedi Abstract “The obscure takes a while to see, the obvious, longer.”  ~ Anonymous Conservation Education ( CE) is the ‘obvious’ part of the larger process of nature conservation. No wonder, there’s much confusion, discussion and dilution about what it is, how to do it - assuming we already know ‘why do it’?!!  Hence, we would begin this workshop with sharing of the practitioners’ quandaries on CE. Next, through brain-storming to understand what you are keen to know, we’d like to visit as many areas/directions, which are entailed under CE… We’ll then share some approaches that have worked successfully and conclude by once again stating the obvious! “One pound of learning requires ten pounds of common sense to apply it.”  ~ Persian proverb Looking forward to interacting with many like-hearted people ...

This piece finds place in THE HINDU, SUNDAY MAGAZINE, 18th August, 2013. There’s more to Conservation Education than just conducting workshops, awareness programmes and seminars, says Nimesh Ved We had just shown an image of a locally occurring primate, shared its English name and, as planned, asked students what its local name was? The reaction was a confused silence, as most of the students didn’t understand the term “local name”. We then discovered that students in Donbosco School at Saiha hailed from Mara, Mizo and Lai tribes ( each of which could have a separate word for the primate ). Two teachers were present, one was from Assam and the other from Kerela. There were few students from other states too. So there was not one but many different names used for that one primate. In a society as diverse as ours we need to be more local and that is what Conservation Education (CE) is all about. CE program at Saiha in Mizoram had us undertake a range of activities th...