Our Other Activities
Campaign amongst children
A special programme was designed and executed for creating awareness among school children about the hazardous effects of improper management of garbage and adoption of appropriate eco-friendly measures for its productive use. Through the assistance of NCSTC, New Delhi, a promotional package was developed in the form a manual and activity book titled, “Gold from Garbage”; the other components of the package were a demonstration model and a poster exhibition. This package was used in a nationwide programme launched to develop a cadre of resource persons for initiating participatory activities for school children on this subject. Another resource package was also developed on ‘Biology and behaviour of Social Insects’ which was also disseminated in different parts of the country.
Science Popularisation Activities
The organisation has taken up various schemes to popularise science amongst children, rural inhabitants and urban citizens. For the children, it has taken up the development of attractive modules on various themes; primarily for the dissemination of information and inculcation of eco-friendly practices among them. For the rural people, it is creating awareness about the conservation of natural resources and for the urban ones about hygienic sanitation, the proper disposal of garbage, healthy dietary habits and the attributes of organic foods.
Organization of conferences & Seminars
In last 25 years, Dharamitra organized local, regional or national level conferences, seminars and meetings to discuss issues pertaining to rural development & especially dealing with sustainable agriculture and conserving natural resources, environmental awareness creation, developing modules for children over certain important environmental issues, etc.
Some pioneering organizational initiatives
Dharamitra has also been pioneer in initiating and leading some community based activities in Vidarbha like ‘Vidarbha Parvaran Parishad’, ‘Vidarbha Sustainable Agriculture Movement’ and ‘Vidarbha Watershed Development Movement’ roping in nuber of active NGOs in Vidarbha. It also took initiative in forming ‘Vidarbha Science Forum for Rural Development’ (VISFORD) to help the small and grass root level NGOs to work with science & technology back up and provided them all the technical guidance in this regard.
Collaboration with Sustainability Institute in South Africa
For quite a long time, there has been an active collaboration between Dharamitra and Sustainability Institute, which is located at Stellenbosch in South Africa and affiliated with Stellenbosch University, under which an interactive training programme is organized at Dharamitra’s Research & Training Centre for the students who come from South Africa and other countries of African continent. The training module is titled as ‘Comparative Studies in Regenerative Food Systems’. Under this two weeks’ course, the students are exposed to organic as well as chemical farms, provided opportunities to interact closely with farmers, taken to village based enterprises, opened to lectures of experts in academic as well practical fields and given chance to build up their own opinions about the present status of food systems and future challenges.