Light of Education for Lodha tribe in Sundarban’s Sagar Island on World Environment Day

This year, the theme of World Environment Day was the development challenges and environmental problems of small islands. Keeping this in mind, SEED decided to inaugurate the first ever Non-formal school for the Lodha tribe of Sundarban’s Sagar Island on 5^th June, 2014 on the occasion of World Environment Day. After all, there is no better way to develop a community than providing them education. Any community can be enlightened on any developmental and environmental issue provided they have basic education to grab the knowledge. 

Mr. Bankim Chandra Hazra inaugurating the Lodha School

Lodha tribe is considered one of the vulnerable primitive tribe of India. They are usually neglected by the mainstream upper class communities in the Sagar Island. They usually stay away from other community people and are far from the light of education. In fact, their kids were not allowed to mix up with other community kids. However, things have changed now since last two years when SEED started a Non-formal education centre especially for the Lodha children. Initially, the school was started under a temporary shed with just a few kids.

The parents of the Lodha children were hesitant to send them to school as they wanted to follow their traditional livelihood system like catching crabs, hunting etc. However, with constant persuasion from the members of SEED, they agreed to send their children to the school. Now, the school has around 65 children, who regularly attend classes under the guidance of 4 teachers recruited by SEED.

With the increasing number of children, the shed became smaller to contain them. So, the organisation started constructing a bigger school building in Radhakrishnapur village of Rudranagar GP area with financial support from TSA Solution, a Singapore based organisation.

On 5^th June, 2014, on the occasion of World Environment Day, the local MLA Sri Bankim Chandra Hazra, who is also the Chairman of Sundarban Development Board, formally inaugurated the first ever school building for the socially excluded Lodha tribe in Sundarban’s Sagar Island.

On this auspicious day, the poor children of Lodha tribe and other economically backward class children were distributed new bags and pencil boxes with the support from Dollar Industries Ltd. Director of SEED, Mr. Bhabananda Chatterjee addressed the school children on this occasion and explained them the importance of keeping our surrounding environment clean and safe. He taught them how they can contribute in their way in keeping the environment safe. He also enlightened the kids and their parents about the necessity of biodiversity conservation in Sundarban islands.

The school children listening to our Director speaking on Environment 

To make the event more interesting for the kids, they were asked to showcase their talent in dancing, singing, reciting and storytelling as the kids are also taught singing, dancing, drawing and other extracurricular activities in the school apart from regular lessons. Mr. Hazra was quite impressed with the performance of these children and promised to extend his support to them in future.

To involve the kids in environment related issues, a plantation programme was also organised. Mr. Hazra started the plantation programme which was followed by other special guests and the students of the school. To raise awareness among the children, a ‘Sit & Draw’ session was organised on the theme of climate change adaptation and biodiversity conservation. 

Plantation by Mr. Bankim Chandra Hazra & Kids showing creativity through drawing

The parents of these kids cannot afford nutritious meal for them regularly so they are also offered healthy snacks during breakfast time.  The kids enjoy their time in school with joyful learning and interesting physical exercises taught to them. SEED puts effort to promote these children to the formal government schools once they get basic education from here.

Apart from the Lodha kids, the school has become able to attract the children of other economically backward communities. They feel their children will have a stronger education base if they start their schooling from here.