India PBL 2014-16
Milestones Year 2
The second Ecovillage Design Education, combined with the Transition Training course, was delivered to 33 community leaders, students and government staff of ICDS projects (Anganwadi workers), and was facilitated by three THREAD resource persons. During the EDE course, practical sessions were conducted in three villages, Dongapaiguda, Birlaput and Semiliguda, where villagers were involved and benefited from the course directly. 54 villagers participated in the six days village programme where demonstration of different kinds of manure, soil enhancement techniques and water conservation were experientially learned.
A further 250 families benefited from the Grow Your Own Food Project with seedlings of banana, papaya, eggplant, drumstick, multi vitamin, tomato, cabbage, cauliflower, mint, turnip, chilli, squash, Punjabi Palak (spinach), nukul, Kerala greens, Poi and seeds of vegetable creeper plants.
All the gardens now have the placard ‘Grow Your Own Food’ in place to popularise and replicate the approaches of other villages.
Preliminary harvest data May – October 2015 In Laxmipur, Sradha Samaj, Semiliguda village ‐ Radha Jani sold papayas weighing approximately 17 kilograms, worth Rs.1500 after consumption.
Indigenous EDE participants conducted poster demonstrations on peak oil with the title ‘No diesel and no petrol after 2020’. This caught the interest of people and media and the Grow Your Own Food Congress gathered 54 tribal and Dalith organisations, strengthening the partnership within and between the federation of women’s organisations.
The second year activities incorporated a festival of best agroecological practices from the villages where the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were introduced to the tribal women. They were able to associate each one of the Goals to their reality and the SDG event was the first such outreach programme held in the region.
Gaia Education’s Project Based Learning is a dynamic learning approach in which stakeholders acquire appropriate skills and analytical tools while actively exploring real-life solutions to the challenges of designing sustainable settlements.
We work with traditional and indigenous communities in the global South to improve the way they manage their environments and villages, while addressing climate change vulnerabilities. Engaged communities benefit with more stable and fertile soil, secure supply of food, clean water and enhanced livelihoods.