With Udawalawa community members!

I made another visit to Udawalwa Pelican Conservation project after my visit last week. My team had organised a training workshop on making paper bags for 20 selected people (13 women and 7 men). It was a very warm gathering as all the participants were so friendly teasing each other while learning how to make the paper bags from old newspapers as an environmental friendly activity. This was the challenge we had at the beginning of our project as many NGO’s had established negative relationships with the community members at Udawalawa and they didn’t believe us too. But all the credit goes to my team members as they worked very hard to establish a good relationship with the community members.

Our young “Friends of Pelicans” are always there. Though officially, they were supposed to come once a week but now they come everyday and spend time reading, discussing, learning and also working with our permanent staff members at the office. This is very encouraging as these young boys are getting their first hand experience in the conservation field. This may help us to achieve the goal of ECO-V “making an environmental friendly society by creating environmental consciousness among the younger generation”.

Kanchana