Engagements - Chennai   

Green group kicks off year's programme

R. Sujatha

Lecture on biodiversity for Adyar school students Lecture on biodiversity for Adyar school students

ECOTALK: Children of a city school listen to Madhuri Ramesh of GNAPE.

CHENNAI : The Group for Nature Preservation and Education (GNAPE), a non-profit, non-government organisation, kicked off this academic year's programme on Friday at Sri Sankara School in Adyar, where class IX students participated in a lecture on biodiversity and natural heritage of the Western Ghats. More such programmes are on the anvil.

GNAPE, founded in 2003, conducts research and documents and disseminates information on India's biodiversity. The NGO partners with school nature clubs and creates awareness by holding slide and talk shows and activity sessions. Since 2004, GNAPE has held competitions for amateur photographers and quiz for school and college students. Members take children on nature walks and field trips.

Students of classes VI to X of Alpha Matriculation Hr Sec School, West CIT Nagar, will participate in a variety of nature-related events and programmes. "This will help us to convert our young audience into nature enthusiasts who can become environmentally responsible citizens in the future," says Bindu Raghavan, veterinarian and conservation biologist. The School (KFI) and Olcott Education Society (Theosophical Society) will organise a series of programmes called "Experiencing Nature." Students from various city schools will go on a guided walk through the woods in the Theosophical Society campus. The third edition of the annual inter-school nature quiz will be held in the first week of October 2006, to coincide with the National Wildlife Week celebrations. The topic for the quiz will be nature and the environment, as it relates to India.

"The aim is to teach students our country's rich biodiversity. They should be able to identify the birds and trees they see everyday," says N. M. Ishwar, a founder and executive director of GNAPE. He has studied reptiles in the Valparai region in Western Ghats.

His colleague and the organisation's education officer, Madhuri Ramesh, who graduated from the Salim Ali School of Ecology, has studied the Travancore tortoise, a species that lives on land.

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