Urban Biodiversity Study.

For one year we will work intensively in 15 schools in Kolkata with students of Classes 7 and 8 (age group 12 to 14 years). The students will view a slide-illustrated talk on “Biodiversity of Kolkata” followed by an interactive session. After this 25 students will be chosen to form the core team along with two teachers. This core team will, in the next three months, be taken on a nature walk around their school premises, involved in nature games and discussions and taken for a visit to a biodiversity hotspot close to Kolkata city. In the fifth month, the core team will formulate a project to conserve the biodiversity of Kolkata in a manner that they can so as to make a sustained impact.

Meeting with school principal.

The Project will be led by Diti Mookherjee, who has been working on environmental education for the last 22 years and is presently the Chief Executive Officer of Association for Social and Environmental Development (ASED), a non-profit organization working on action-based awareness to enhance environmental conservation and community health in West Bengal, India. She will be assisted by the team from ASED consisting of Kushal Mookherjee, a naturalist who has been involved with environmental education for 25 years. He is the Secretary of Prakriti Samsad, a leading environmental conservation organization based in Kolkata and a member of the National Board for Wildlife, India and the State Wildlife Advisory Board. The other team member is Samya Basu, who is presently working for his Masters Degree in Environmental Science and helping ASED with its environmental education programs.

This program team will work closely with the core team for successful implementation of the project for the next 7 months. In this time the core team will have sufficient exposure to motivate other students in the school and work on nature awareness and conservation issues in future. They will be assisted in networking with concerned other organisations and government departments so that they can access information and seek assistance for their future programmes. After completion of the Project, information sharing will be done with the Forest Department, West Bengal and environmental NGOs in the city. School projects that may contribute significantly towards conservation of the city's biodiversity will be publicised in the media.