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)

SWASH Village - Rural waste management project

The arrival of 6 plastic disposal bins to Naddi village would not make anyone else as happy as it has made this Australian 21-year-old volunteer-intern. Arrived on July, Morgan Mcintosh did not previously had any ideas on which project to establish in the village. And although she herself confesses not being “a very environmental person at all”, waste management problems in the area caught her attention immediately.

The local hills are green seen from afar during the monsoon season, but in a closer examination, other colors can be found: those of plastic bottles, plastic wrappers and other trash. “I thought it was a big shame that there were no facilities in the place, particularly in such a beautiful setting, so I thought I’d do something”.
People in the area would normally throw their trash away, or accumulate it in bins only to burn it all later, posing serious health and environmental issues. And after her first days of deliberation, she found out that the problem was also a concern for the community in Naddi.

The kids used magazine paper to make beautiful and environmental-friendly necklaces

“I was really happy that the community brought up the issue themselves before I even got the chance through Young Woman’s Association and the Girls Club. On my first couple of days, when I was giving it a thought, they showed their interest too” So she started doing some research and move into getting solutions for the problem by preparing a SWASH project (Sanitation of Water, Air and Soil for Healthy village).

Waste can be managed
Education was the first step: she organized several activities for the kids and grown-ups to know how to separate the different items. Reuse activities also took place in her project, like the necklaces made in Girls Club out of magazine sheets.

Morgan after her lecture on recycling at the school

But the main goal was to get several bins so that all these ideas got into practice. After decorating them, the Fun club was also devoted to trash picking and then sorting of it, an activity at which the kids showed all they had learned in the past weeks.

There are now recycling bins in the Sheynnee community, as well as the Government School in Naddi, where Morgan also gave a well-attended lecture about waste management to the kids.

A basic lesson about resources and their potential unavailability in the future was also part of her project.
As she puts it, “there’s lots of areas that need to be covered: recycling is important, but also sustainability, resources… more environmental issues will be covered when more interns arrive”.