A glimpse of one of the activities under ​‘Mapping our Village’, to help children understand and appreciate their surroundings — including natural and man-made resources, cultural sites and important facilities in their village.

Adivasi constitute 8.6 percent of India’s population, and Bastar district in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh is home to several Adivasi communities. The economic, social, and cultural life of Adivasis here is closely connected to the forest landscape in which they live. The Adivasi communities, especially the older generation, are repositories of valuable traditional ecological knowledge transferred across generations.

Mainstream education is critical for building the capabilities of Adivasis to live in today’s world. But equally imperative is finding ways to ensure the continued connection of the younger generation with their traditional practices and bolstering a sense of pride in their ecological knowledge.

Keeping this in mind, and on the request of the Chhattisgarh Forest Department, we designed activity-based learning (ABL) worksheets for Adivasi children of Bastar.

These worksheets were aimed at enabling Adivasi children to document different aspects of biodiversity around them, explore their community’s traditional practices and highlight nature-culture relationships. The worksheets were contextually designed and included a mix of in-class activities, field data collection, and performances. 

Activities like village mapping, where students collectively identify natural and man-made resources, cultural sites, infrastructure/​facilities, etc. were designed to not only enhance their understanding of the surroundings but also nurture pride in their rich cultural heritage.

Through the sheets, students were introduced to bird watching sessions to provide hands-on experiences with local biodiversity, complemented by collecting oral stories about local birds from elders, connecting generations.

A worksheet focusing on medicinal plants was aimed at encouraging students to appreciate the traditional ecological knowledge of their community, the medicinal properties of local plants and the traditional methods of preparing medicines using the plants.

The worksheets also included an exploration of the traditional festivals, agricultural and non-timber forest product diversity, and cultural relevance of trees — all of which were aimed at highlighting the nature-culture relationships that rarely find focus in the mainstream education curriculum the Adivasi children were exposed to.

The hands-on activities include making a model of the village and the landscape around, making seed bombs that help with forest regeneration and creating a tree using leaves the children collect and bring to class.

The in-class and hands-on activities go beyond conventional textbook learning. These worksheets also had the web of life activity emphasising the interconnectedness of humans, animals and plants of the ecosystem. The ABL worksheets not only facilitate a more effective approach to nature-based education but also contribute to the preservation of traditional knowledge.

We see the worksheets as a repository documented by the children of their local knowledge and practices. These worksheets are versatile and can be adapted easily to other rural and forested regions of India, and even adapted to peri-urban settings. These are currently available in Hindi and English.

Moreover, we have also designed colouring worksheets featuring native birds, reptiles, and animals found in this landscape. These colouring worksheets can be freely downloaded here and used for educational purposes.

We believe that worksheets like these align with our University’s vision to provide education for social change by promoting environmental care and cultural pride.

Acknowledgements

We thank Dhammshil Ganvir and the Chhattisgarh Forest Department, as well as our colleagues at the Azim Premji Foundation District Institute of Dhamtari for their support. We thank Yazhini AS, Ameen Sulaiman and Abhi Rai for their contributions to the design of the worksheets.