I never thought that IAEEC2019 will be so much engaging and encouraging for me. I became a part of it as a member of the organizing team first. But, when I learnt that my responsibilities will require me to spend all the time with the event, I was lured to take the opportunity to be a participant. Today, when I am looking back to the time almost a month ago, I feel that I took a best decision to join this course.
As a educator who is on the initial phases of her career, I believe I have so much more to learn on educating communities and students on environment and nature. International Applied Environmental Education Course gave me a very good opportunity to enrich myself with so many good experiences.
Apart from the course curriculum, which was well thought, planned and executed by two of the best environmental educators of the world, this course also gave me the scope to learn from field works. As a part of our field exposures at Manas National Park, we interacted with Bodo communities in the fringes of the heritage site on various resource issues and tried to identify problems and issues of them with respect to the national park. We have collected information, analysed and developed communication packages for the communities which was shared with the representatives of the EDCs near the park. Their feedback on our plans and packages gave us new insight to the process and I believe this will help us in future. Similarly, we have also gone for a river walk and interacted with the Karbi communities as a part of our aim to design an educational campaign for saving the river from dying.
Experiential learning was one of the best thing that we have been taught in the course. Learning by doing and the scope of applying it to generate awareness and knowledge is a strategy every eco-educators should know. The practical exercise was fun and our application of the concept during the river walk made it more enriching in many ways.
But, the most interesting part of the course was that it opened a way for interacting and sharing ideas with experts from various sectors. Participants, guest instructors, instructors, community members, conservation activists, forest management personnel - we met so many people in this 21 days and got a glimpse of many good works and ideas that are being done across the globe. Further, developing a bonding among all like minded people and opening up the ways for future coordination and collaboration was something I have gained from the course, which will last beyond its stipulated duration.
With all this, I would like to sign off for the day and say - Vive la IAEEC2019!!
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