April 25, 2019, Thursday
Since the past few years, one of the annual major projects of Tibetan Children’s Village School, Selakui has been the three days Navdanya program. This time, 20 students from class tenth participated along with school science teachers Ms. Sherab Wangmo and Ms. Pema Dolker as an escort teacher. The students' selection was based completely on their interview performances. The event took place from 19 of April and finished on 21 April 2019.
The main aim of this program is to inculcate and enhance the participant knowledge of organic farming and environmental related challenges and how and why Navdanya preserved the seed species. Apart from theory, students were able to take part in organic farming processes as well.
First Day
The Navdanya coördinator Mr. J.P. Khali inaugurated the event by speaking on how the Navdanya comes to existence and about its founder Dr. Vandana Shiva and her struggle and success. Later continued by National coördinator Mr. D.S. Negi who spoke in details on seed preservation. Moreover, to enhance in-depth comprehension, he took them to the field to explain how the seed selections are done.
In the evening events, participants were taken for field tour guided by Mr. C.S. Bhatt and Mrs. Bhuvneshwari Students were introduced different types of crops, medicinal trees, seed bank, vermicompost as well.
Second Day
The day embarked with chamomile harvesting for almost one and half hour followed by field work led by Mr. P. Kimothi. During the fieldwork, the soil was prepared for plantation of vegetables in the evening by removing the weeds, leveling the soil. In the afternoon session, students were taught why kitchen gardening is important and which type of vegetables and fruits are suitable for the kitchen garden. Besides that, the lecture was followed by the teaching of how to transfer saplings to garden in practical. At the end of day two, students planted one big plot of with saplings of Tomato, Chilly, and Brinjal. In addition, some Marigold flowers were planted in between the vegetable saplings to distract the pollinators and other pests from damaging the vegetable crops. After dinner, students were shown a documentary movie called “Bullshit” to understand the journey of Dr. Vandana Shiva.
Third Day
On the third day, everyone took part in collecting the leaves fallen around in the campus during the morning cleaning time headed by Mr. Giresh. Then later, Mr. Kimothi and Mr. Anand explained on different types of compost and specifically stressed on how to make a pit compost. Also, the students learned how to make pit compost in physical. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJba8Mu8G8s
Afterward, in the evening, the participants got an opportunity to have question answer session with Mr. Giresh, who is the present coördinator of local farmers around in Dehradun locality.
On 22 April 2019, during Earth Day celebration function in school, The participants shared their knowledge and experience they acquired from Navdanya with the rest of the students through presentations and video. They presented particularly on Seed preservation, Kitchen gardening, and Pit composting followed by a short movie of their three-day stays at Navdanya.
