Little Trip to Lajwanti Nursery: a beautiful place, a passionate owner, an amazing help for EduCARE!

January, the season for grafting has come! Back from the holidays, we remembered a visit in October to Lajwanti Nursery, a beautiful nursery in Dharamshala. The owner of the place, very friendly, had offered to show us grafting when the season would come.

We called and were immediately offered to come the day after. Near the police station in Dharamshala, nobody was able to guide us to the nursery. We were a bit lost! After a phone call to the nursery, someone came to pick us up. We arrived at the nursery by 11am.

How nice to see the place again! Lajwanti Nursery is a quiet place, owned by a passionate man who is always very keen to share and discuss about his passion. Plants are everywhere! From the ground to the walls, they are grown on every space available. Here is the ideal for anyone who wants to learn: nearly all the trees are labeled with the local and the Latin name.

It is also well suited if you just want to wander around. The nursery is very beautiful and full of flowers depending on the season. A member of the family is passionate about animals so you can also see some dogs, birds, etc., on your way.

The subject of the day was grafting. Naddi, the village we are working in, is surrounded by the forest. We are planting some trees on a steep slope and the inhabitants would be very interested in having fruit trees. But the fruits that we can find there are really tiny and not very good.

A solution: grafting!

What we could do is use the local trees as stem trees and graft a fruit tree branch on it.

The result: a tree adapted to the area because it is local to it, with branches and big fruits from another tree! To do this you need to pick up two trees of the same family (genius).So we learned how to do this properly and grafted pear on “Kanth”: a local wild pear tree. There is a lot of “Kanth” in Naddi so we can definitely reproduce this. We can also graft Cherry on “Paja”: another local tree.

We should be able to see the result of the grafts in about 2 weeks’ time. We will go there again to see if the graft went well and to buy some trees to be able to begin our grafting process by next year! We hope to be able to bring a community member with us so that she can meet the owner of the place.

The owner is very enthusiastic and will be a permanent help and contact for the organization!

Thank you Lajwanti Nursery and see you soon! 

Louise Brunier and Johnatan de Larminat - France

Forestry Project Managers, Naddi (Himachal Pradesh) 

Welcome to Harike

The first month in Harike has passed, and it has gone very fast. Many things have happened, and the team has been working hard to establish strong connections with the local communities. After the end of quarterlies, the team began strategizing on the future of the centre and planned the centre's activities for the following year. After some house decoration activities (led by our former centre manager Ethan), the real work began.

First Saturday Meeting complete

Until now, we established two weekly ASP’s with two different local communities. The wonderful  Jessica, our Women’s empowerment project manager, has initiated a Girls’ Club with the Makhu girls and has received a very positive response. Our Eco-building project manager, Maria, has been working hard at establishing relations with local women who will host the eco home stays in the future, as well as worked on the plan for eco-buildings in all of EduCARE’s centres. While our new centre manager Tommaso, in between cooking delicious meals for all the interns, has begun his business plan for Harike’s ReSTORE. In addition, we also began giving workshops to a local school on a range of subjects including SWASH, girls’ health, disaster management and environmental awareness. Maria and Jessica gave the first two workshops and received very positive feedback from both the children and the teachers. These workshops will be given twice a month for the next year and are aimed at raising awareness amongst local children about important issues.

Harike team members standing next to their caricature

With respect to the forestry project, Harike has a lot of potential particularly due to its proximity to Harike’s Wetland, a protected area which includes a bird sanctuary home to hundreds of birds migrating from places as far as Siberia. The forestry team, composed of Sydney and I, had a pretty successful month in terms of establishing contacts and planning future projects. During this month, we have managed to meet and interview a number of officers from Punjab’s Forest Department in both Harike and Firozpur, as well as visited Makhu’s tree nursery to learn about the local flora and fauna. After some brainstorming sessions and lengthy discussions with Mr B, we came up with a number of projects to implement in the future. These include:

·  Establishing a tree nursery at the local Sikh temple, planting bamboos and a number of other local trees, with the aim of engaging the local community in taking care of the trees and create, in this way, a social forestry project.

·  Work with some of the women from Makhu village to create organic vegetable gardens for self-consumption.

·         ·  Establish an income-diversification project aimed at the two local communities we work with in Harike. As these communities’ incomes rely on extraction of resources from the wetland (for example by fishing and cutting wood for fuel and fodder), our aim will be to create a number of organic vegetable gardens for the families to use for self-consumption. This will allow the families to reduce their expenditure on food, improve their levels of nutrition, as well as promote more sustainable agricultural practices.

Harike team at Quarterlies

For the moment, these are the forestry project priorities and steps have been taken to ensure we’re on the right track to achieve these in the next year. In addition to the main project, Sydney and I also created a new garden for the interns’ house which will be used to grow organic vegetables, as well as mosquito-repellent plants (which are very much needed for the summer months here).

All in all, our first month here went very fast, between some planning and strategizing, drinking many, many chais, film nights, perfecting our parantha recipe, running away from frisky buffalos, playing cricket with the children and experiencing our first Punjabi wedding, we have learnt a lot but still have a lot to achieve.

Our first Punjabi wedding

Alessandra Sciarra- Italy 

Forestry and Organic Farming Project Manager, Harike (Punjab)

From Himachal to Harike

The coordinator role at EduCARE involves providing support and guidance to not only yours, but all projects that run under your department’s domain. As of now, EduCARE has official forestry projects in both our Naddi and Harike centres, however when I first arrived Naddi’s was the only one established. I gained a lot of valuable knowledge living and working in Naddi for 3 months – the Indian culture, the biodiversity of Himachal Pradesh and ‘torro torro’ Hindi. When the centre opened in Harike and the first forestry intern arrived to take a position there, I knew my time in Naddi would come to an end to fulfil my role of project coordinator. Within my time living in both states, I’ve come to understand three main differences between the two centres: the projects, the people and the pollution. 

When I first arrived in Naddi, there were many documents I needed to catch myself up on in order to get a grip on the existing and past projects. The green gift project, the plantation and the tree nursery were all great efforts from past interns, but unfortunately had been halted with the several month gap between forestry interns. My goal in Naddi was to revive each of these projects, starting with shifting the ownership of the plantation to the community and restarting the tree nursery to supply saplings to the plantations and community in the future. After Johnatan and Louise arrived, the projects made great headway and they each took their contributions to another level to lead our initiatives to sustainability and success. 

Johnatan, a forestry project manager, in the recently constructed tree nursery in Naddi. The main sowing season is in March, however Deodar and Kaintt, planted in the polybags pictured, should be sowed in December.

On the contrary, Alex and I made it to Harike with little to go off of other than the few research papers on the Harike Wetlands and the knowledge that the communities surrounding the protected area were depending on its products. Most of our work so far has been creating a network of local stakeholders and support, as well as engaging and learning about the communities that we will eventually be starting our projects with. Being the first forestry interns at the centre, we are committed to creating a thorough and organized database of our gathered research. 

Over the years, Naddi interns have made strong connections with the community and local shopkeepers; it’s not uncommon for Omi of Om’s café to slip you a free chai with your breakfast paratha or share a delicious dahl dinner with the village families. Naddi was so much like a second home to me, that when I arrived in Harike I almost forgot that I wasn’t native to India! We are still met with curious stares from every direction and have to barter in the markets to get local prices. Although we are becoming acquainted over chai with individual families in the villages, we still have a ways to go to establish a trusted bond that is parallel to those with Naddi’s communities. 

Flock of birds at Harike Wetlands, a Ramsar site. The invasive flora specie, Water Hyacinth, has posed many issues in the wetlands, including siltation.

The landscape between the two centres is vastly different; Naddi is in the foothills of the Himalayas, whereas Harike is located in the agricultural plains of Punjab. To the naked eye, Himachal’s environment seems pristine with its clean air and abundant resources. However, the area is severely littered with solid waste, its 5.1 million livestock population is degrading its productive land and its inhabitants and tourism sector are taking forest management into their own hands. 

Punjab’s pollution problems are much more obvious. A thick cloud of smog gives the sunset an apocalyptic hue and the natural landscape has been transformed into chemical ridden crop fields. The bird sanctuary in the wetlands is a beautiful escape from the bustle of the city, however effluents from industries upstream have threatened aquatic life and an invasive specie, Water Hyacinth, has taken up almost 50% of the wetland’s surface water. Both centres have pollution issues that would rouse the concerns and action of environmental enthusiasts everywhere. 

It’s important for interns to experience more than one region of India while they are here, coordinator or not. New perspectives and a heightened knowledge of the Indian culture will bring a lot to your projects and will send you home with stories. Although saying a temporary so long to my project and friends in Naddi was not easy, the comforts and challenges in Harike have welcomed me to a whole other world within India.

Sydney  Strelau - Canada

Forestry Project Coordinator,  Harike (Punjab)

A Tree Nursery in Chenni!

What an exhausting day today: transporting manure and filling bags and bags and bags…

Bags?

What for?

Well to plant trees!

Deodar, Kant, Ban… They are all ready to be planted in their new home: the Chenni tree nursery. And what a cozy home with its lovely door, its compost place and its little tool rack… here trees will be safe and protected from goats, cows, chicken and dogs. After one year and a half of this happy childhood they will be ready to be transplanted on the slope above Chenni. There they will maintain the soil, which is very unstable, and protect the village from a possible landslide. They will also provide fodder and fuel close to the village, which depends a lot on this wood. 

The wonderful little nursery space built by Johny

But this would never be possible without people to take care of them. Everyone in the Chenni community is aware of the nursery and very welcome to help, but Reena and Varsha in particular take care of the trees. They learn how to prepare the seeds and plant them. And Varsha never comes without her kids: Shanvi and Manvi, always very enthusiastic: “Louissse going field?” usually ask Shanvi when I go down to Chenni. In the picture below, you can see Manvi, very proud of herself: she just pied on the mixed soil! With her, the trees won’t lack nutrient! 

Filling bags activity

We also benefited from the help of the forest department, which gave us lots of information. We practiced the mixing of the soil in nurseries and had a little morning trek to fetch bags.

The nursery will soon extend with a new greenhouse and a bamboo growing area planned for next month. But as nothing goes as it was planned in EduCARE you will soon hear of the new adventures of the forestry team!

Louise Brunier - France

Forestry Project Manager, Naddi (Himachal Pradesh)

World Environment Day

This auspicious day not only holds up to its name for me, it was the day I realized my passion and what field I would like to study in.

It was not just a day to celebrate but to also be conscious of the state of the environment around us. It was a moment of epiphany for me, a flash of my destiny to dedicating my life to the welfare of the planet which is so important. We cannot wholeheartedly celebrate the arrival of a newborn as our world is still in crumbles. Almost like trying to redecorate the interior of a home when its outsides are shattered and broken or there are no proper walls.

According to the United Nations, this day is used to stimulate worldwide awareness of environmental climate changes, degradation and fragmentation of our landscapes, pollution and wildlife threats. The theme of this year’s WED is focused on ‘Small Islands and Climate Change’ as the consequences of global warming have had its impacts on small islands like the eco-tourism of Barbados (as said by WWF).

As I was once an Environmental science student and currently the project manager of the Community Forestry Project of EduCARE India, I feel fulfilled as I am not only encouraging the community members to plant trees for their financial and social empowerment, but I am also doing my part to make planet Earth greener and safer.

- Monica Fatogun, India

- Social & Community Forestry Project Manager, Naddi