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REPORT
FROM VRINDAVAN 1. ACHIEVEMENTS IN PROJECT YEAR 1995/96 a. Education 500 boys and girls have enrolled in 34 Nature Clubs and are working as volunteers on WWF projects in Vrindavan. 50 teachers have been trained in environmental education through a series of workshops based around a special curriculum developed with the help of the Environmental Education Centre in Ahmedabad. The 3 school nurseries have been improved and developed: between them at these nurseries children are raising 9,400 tree saplings of local fast-growing and fruit-bearing species. Efforts continue to start similar nurseries in the other schools of the town, wherever space allows. Environmental education using a curriculum developed with the help of the Centre for Environmental Education in Ahmedabad has been maintained in the existing 29 schools and a further 5 school have been added to bring the totals to 6 Senior, 16 Junior and 12 Primary schools. Inter-school activities have been staged, such as the 4th annual WWF Environmental Quiz competition and a water testing programme. Children from several schools staged plays 3 times during the year: 'Mother Nature' with songs and sayings from saints of India in August; a puppet show and environmental sketch in April-May in the town market places; and an exhibition and play at the annual children's fair. A 2-day nature camp for 100 children and their teachers was held at Chamelivan, a religious monkey sanctuary in Vraj. b. Tree planting 3,000 trees have been planted in community areas, on the pilgrim path and in sacred groves 3 new nurseries have been started in ashrams in Vrindavan. Negotiations are in progress for a further 5 ashram nurseries. 30,000 sacred and seasonal plants have been distributed among the community, backed up by advice and training in plant care, and a Plant Clinic set up, visited by an average of 7 persons daily. 5 sacred groves have been adopted for tree-planting and conservation: Nidivan, Sevakunj, Madhavan, Karadkund and Kishorvan. c. Cleaning Negotiations have been successfully concluded to bring Sulabh International to Vrindavan with government backing (see 3.1 below). WWF have co-ordinated some local government action to clear one or two sewage hotspots along the parikrama path. 2. DEVELOPMENTS FOR 1996/97 a. A Discover Vrindavan Children's Centre is to be set up on a superb site in Old Vrindavan made available to the project by the Government of Rajasthan through Shrivatsa Goswami, the chairman of the project Advisory Group. The design and operation of the centre is to be overseen directly by Dr S M Nair, former director of the National Museum of Natural History in Delhi. The capital cost of the project is to be spread over 2 or 3 years. Its main aim will be to give the youth of Vrindavan a full understanding of the history and development of Vrindavan, and the solutions to its environmental problems in the context of its religious culture, and to act as a resource base for environmental education. b. Sulabh International, India's largest sanitation NGO, which specialises in introducing ecologically sustainable sanitation and sanitary training into rural and urban areas, is to join forces with WWF in Vrindavan. The essence of the Sulabh system is that it uses only very small quantities of water, does not depend on centralised sewage treatment, and produces as a by-product high quality compost. Sulabh employs 35,000 staff in India and its installations are used by an estimated 10 million Indians a day. They have recently received a substantial government grant under the Yamuna Action Plan to take up work in Vrindavan and have pledged themselves to devote all their efforts to solving the town's sanitary problems and to training householders in basic sanitary practice along ecological lines. c. Relocation of the monkeys of Vrindavan, paid for by the U.P. Government. Vrindavan suffers from a massive overpopulation of monkeys, which endangers all newly planted and existing trees as well as the residents themselves, and has been a major obstacle to the overall progress of the Vrindavan Conservation Project. A detailed plan to deal with what is locally termed the 'monkey-menace' has been worked out involving relocating monkey colonies to secluded forest areas elsewhere in the region where they will be in their natural habitat undisturbed by human settlements, and all the necessary permits and funding have been obtained from local and state government agencies. Relocation by trained specialists under the supervision of WWF is scheduled to begin on 15 November 1996 d. A pilot street-cleaning project is proposed by Shri Caitanya Samsthan as an adjunct to the main WWF project, separately funded by Friends of Vrindavan.
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