On February 16, 2022, three Emerging Ecology representatives will be making a trip to India. Our board president, Nelson, will be leading this trip with two younger colleagues, Tim Leisman and Will Sands. Nelson walks a well-trodden path between familiar places on these trips, including three previous trips with Will to visit the Chikhale School (See map)). Tim is traveling to India for the first time.
After arriving at the Mumbai international airport, we will head to Panvel in Navi Mumbai, where we’ll be staying at the Peace Park Hotel. The Peace Park is a 20 minute rickshaw ride from the Chikhale School. During seven years of support for the Chikhale School, Emerging Ecology has sent nearly $30,000 to ICA India for various programs and activities at the school. Since Emerging Ecology was founded, we have supported electronic interchange between classes of 11th grade Chikhale students and students from participating schools in the Piedmont Triad through our Global Classroom program. These interchanges expanded the worldview of participants on both sides of the dialogue. Our trip this year will focus on building out a new curriculum with the faculty and students at Chikhale and improving technical capacity at the school to enhance our future programming.
On the 24th of February, while Will stays in Panvel and focuses on connecting with alumni of the school, Nelson and Tim will leave Panvel and head to Talegaon, where they will stay at ICA India’s Environmental Education Center. The Environmental Education Center provides a residential training facility for up to 20 people. It serves as the hub for ICA India’s work with villages and urban neighborhoods. Nelson will be introducing Tim to colleagues and friends associated with ICA India, a peer organization to Emerging Ecology that conducts similar grassroots-level ecological stewardship programming. The two will observe a village program and exchange approaches that we will test out and continue to work with each other on during 2022.
After a week in Talegaon, Tim and Nelson will head back to Panvel to meet Will and reflect; the first week of March, the whole crew heads back to the US. We will conduct a virtual session where we report on the trip later in February. Keep an eye here on our blog for updates on our travels! Below, note the map snipped from Google Maps showing the region with relevant destinations highlighted.
Our trip to India is supported through a combination of our own personal funds and the support of individual donors. We would like to thank Bill Bingham, Mark Green, Fred Lehman, Jacob Fulkerson and Lavon Williams in particular for their contributions towards this trip.