Project Kaggaladu:
Date: 20-July-2008

This is one of the dream projects since inception in February 2008, which is slightly different from other projects.
Kaggaladu is small village with 25 houses, near Sira taluk, on the way to Changapura. Main occupation and the source of income is agriculture for the people depending on rain. Although the village has interconnected 2 lakes for serving the purpose, the lakes rarely fills up.
But the main point of attraction is this is a bird sanctuary. Variety of species of birds like Painted storks, Black ibis, Spot billed pelicans, Grey herons, Pelicans, Baya weaver and many more are main habitats in this area, apart from sparrows and crows. These birds are migrating and come from different places of the world; also this is the only place where painted strokes have chosen to live in south India. These birds visit this village from January and lay eggs, and feed their young ones, help to grow and in the month of June July they start their next destination. Amazingly birds wish to live on tamarind trees, as this can support lot of weight and easy to build nest due to tamarind tree structure. Most of the tamarind trees are within the village. The main food for these birds is fish from the nearby lakes. Feeling interested?
KFD, Karnataka Forest Department has identified this as a bird sanctuary, but hardly you will get information. Even you don’t find a sign post to reach Kaggaladu, unless you ask by-passers. Couples of years back, KFD official were available at this village to help these birds by feeding fish, but this is diminishing. But these birds are part of daily life of the villagers and villagers are very interested to see more bird arriving. A primary school welcomes you to the village.
We visited this place for the feasibility of tree plantations, identifying planting location and met village leaders for their support for our project. This happened in 16-June-2008. Remember, local support is very important.
On 20-july-2008, we started from Bangalore with 60 saplings and 6 volunteers to Kaggaladu. We reached the village around 1030 hours. First thing we met village leaders for their support and discussed our idea and. We met Jnansindu, HK Raju and Shankarappa who are the village panchayath members. Later we received acceptable support from the local people. Digging tools were borrowed and we planted approximately 10 numbers of jack fruit saplings in the school premises mainly for the shade. This was done to promote other variety of tree to grow which requires minimum supervision. Later we planted remaining 45 saplings of tamarind across various places in the village. Children were more interested than elders. (Young buds proved they don’t think commercially) we finished all the plantings. These trees need deeper pit, as the roots should be firmly holding earth. Surprisingly villagers wanted more saplings to plant at their premises; it is good to see someone is willing to come forward to plant a tree. By this time, work was completely managed by kids! We provided fence with the Jaali trees.
During planting time, a person objected to plant a sapling, digging deep the matter, he disclosed the place belongs to him and he want to chop off a existing tamarind tree, were birds are nesting. We all gathered to convince him and to alter his house building plans. Also KFD is providing money per year for the landlord, if the nesting tree belongs in his private land. We put all efforts to convince him. We wish to see the tree during our next visit. Also Levin provided very good advice to villagers on cost saving building house techniques, how to prepare best manure within village…and so on.
By this time, we were exhausted; we finished our parcel plate Idlis and started by 1530hours. At the end of the day we had a satisfaction that, we did something better than others.

Volunteers; Harsha, Levin, Albert, Retish, Balasubramaniam, Sharavan (RNSIT)
Few pictures are available at following internet address:
http://picasaweb.google.co.in/dhwani.team/Kaggaladu

"Dhwani" is more than just a group of people.Dhwani is a wonderful community of people from different backgrounds and ages. Dhwani members are from different disciplines and profession but they all cherish a single dream, they all stand together for a common cause. Our diverse community is brought together by our care for the planet, and a desire to do what we can to make it a better place.

Dhwani members respond by rapidly combining the small amounts of time or money they can give into a powerful collective force.

If you are a person who is concerned about the quality of life your community. You assume responsibility for the public good and see a need to act together for a common good of the community.

Take ownership of the problem and opportunities that exist in the community and hold yourself responsible for seeing that action is taken.

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Be a member with

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Project called "Light a Lamp"

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Project Tree plantation at Al-Ameen school, Malur road, Hoskaote:
Date: 12-July-2008

Another flying project from Team Dhwani-Parisara.
Al-Ameeen school is located on the Malur road, Hosakate. This has primary to higher school and also has separate hostel facility for boys and girls. Approximately 200 students are studying in this school headed by xxxxx. And again approximately 125 students are residing in the hostel within the school campus. Students form various places are studying here including economically poor. School administration identifies the financial background of student and provides free hostel and education. The school campus is pretty big with 30 acres. Headmaster was very eager to provide space for planting sapling in their premises.
The plan was to plant 200 saplings along with students, and to create awareness with our Dhwani-volunteers and involving with them.
As the school campus has huge area, the buildings like teacher’s room, class room, boy’s hostel, girl’s hostel and a mosque are located distantly and well planned. As the space availability and ownership is positive, we planned to have variety of trees like fruit bearing, flower bearing, shade purpose trees. For which the flora and fauna will have a room in this area.
The feasibility for the project and responsibility of saplings were discussed with head master during previous visit on 5 July 2008.
On July 12th morning few of us went to KFD Nursery near ITPL at 8AM, here we can have a variety of choice to select saplings. Also it has become easy task, as we can get guidance and advises from nursery owner. Comparatively, the cost per sapling is lower.
By the time at 930AM, we have selected variety of saplings.
Our hired tempo traveler arrived at 10 AM with 13 enthusiastic volunteers. We packed all the saplings to TT and started towards the school.
With the help of school administrative, the future building plans were discussed to have proper understanding of the area. By the time Levin along with students started to mark the place for saplings. Harsha and Prashanth were planning to which plant go on which side, like flower bearing and small trees round the office surroundings. Medium –large trees on the path ways, fruit bearing trees around the living area, medium flower bearing trees around the play ground and large trees around the mosque.
By this time all our volunteers had arrived. We had few digging tools and we borrowed few from school administration. School children were eagerly waiting to feel the experience. In fact we had difficulty to handle overwhelming students in a sudden!
All trees were segregated and handled with our volunteers. And each volunteer will be taking few students for the further process.
Our volunteers explained the type of sapling we had, and their benefits along with the importance of conserving our ecology. Also volunteers demonstrated how to hold the tool, how much deep the pit should have, how to plant the sapling, putting back the soil for a small water holding basin. We were finishing almost all areas simultaneously. It was wonder to see kids fighting to plant their trees and watering with love as if the planted saplings were their asset.
Sun was spilling his heat at noon.
Now it was lunch time. By the time of 200PM, we had left with very few saplings. And planted remaining saplings around the kids play area in the school campus. Headmaster convinced to have lunch and continue, but we wanted to finish our task. In the meanwhile few volunteers were assisting to watering the plants.
Now most of us were feeling thirsty and hungry. One of the volunteer shared few TIGER biscuits. Later we had lunch with head master. We had Tomatobath and curd rice at the boy’s hostel.
At 400PM we concluded with planting all saplings. We captured few photographs with students with note of thanks to the school staff.
Following are the type of saplings we planted. You can click the link next to the plant name for more information.
Bahemia-10 numbers;Sampige-10 numbers;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champak;Legastrome/hole Lagetramia-20 numbers
Butterfly plant/mitragayana-20 numbers;Singpore cherry-25 numbers
Jackfruit-10 numbers;Shivani-10 numbers
Honge-30 numbers;Ashoka-5 numbers
Takoma-10 numbers;Jacaranda-5 numbers
Bettada nallikaaye-5 numbers;Attigida-10 numbers
Arali-10 numbers;Neem-20 numbers
Total: 200 saplings

Without these volunteers the project would not been a success:

Albert;Amit Gupta;Amogh;Anand;AnithaChetan;Divya;
Harsha;Kaushik;Levin;LukeMadhusudhan;Monica;
Neelima;PhanirajPrashant;Praveen;Raghavan;
Satvik;SawanShravan Purohit;Shravan;Shrikanth;
Sreelakshmi;Swapna;
Thanks to one and all.
-Harsha

……Global warming .

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If not we who?????

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We, the youth can truly make a difference; not just in our lives alone, but in the lives of all those around us.
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