Environmental Education

ATREE’s outreach and education programmes have been initiated through ATREE’s Community Conservation Centres (CCC) at Kanakapura, MM Hills, BR Hills, KMTR and Vembanad and the North East Programme. Through these centres, ATREE emphasizes a learning-by-doing approach, in which children interact with their environment and learn how to value nature and conserve what sustains us all.

ATREE has devised many CCC-specific environment education modules that emphasize a hands-on experiential learning approach, outside the formal school education system. Our emphasis so far has been place based – to familiarize participants with their immediate landscape (forest/wetland), its biodiversity (trees, birds, butterflies, reptiles, fishes, etc.) and the ecosystem services it provides, and to restore the declining traditional knowledge on natural resources and their management among children, which school curricula do not facilitate. ATREE has also developed teaching guides like Vanasanjeevani and Jalapodam for teachers.

ATREE is now expanding its environmental education to develop long-term activity-based approaches looking at the formal school curriculum and involving teachers.