Networking for ECO-V 10th Anniversary projects

We have been really busy meeting people and making contacts since we came to Melbourne. Our effort was very successful as we met many wonderful people who care about nature. Our involvement with volunteer networks here was very interesting as volunteering helped us to get rid of the guilty feeling of leaving Sri Lanka and ECO-V work for some time. Most of the volunteer groups here are called “working bee” with their suburb name. The closest working bee for us is Fairefield working Bee. The most recent activity we did with them was mulching and weeding the Fairfield station area where Thushara catch the train to go to work. Boo and Nipu also really enjoyed doing some hard work like transporting mulch using a Wheel Barrow.

 I visited the Marine Discovery centre, Geelong through my friends at Department of Sustainability and Environment in Victoria which is a great place for marine wetland conservation awareness. People I met were really wonderful and shared much important information and made very good contacts for future work in Sri Lanka.

We have been having several networking meetings for past few weeks. Jim Crosthwaite and his group, Samanthi Gunawardane and her group, Frank Ryan and his contacts are few main meetings among them. They all wanted to work towards a common goal and we discussed future collaborations.

 In additions to meeting people, we met some of the native animals in Australia. Cute sleeping Koalas at Koala Park and little fairy penguins (the world smallest penguins) in Phillip Islands, Possums, and wallabies and many birds are some.

ECO-V is making preparation for “Mihimadala Exhibition 2010” with the theme of Prevent Global Warming; Conserve Biodiversity” at Sri Lanka Exhibition and Convention Centre (SLECC)  from 21^st to 23^rd October. We invite all our members to come to ECO-V stall and take our message across to public.This exhibition is organized by Young Zoologist Association (YZA) in parallel to its international youth conference on the same theme.

The second article for Ariona life style magazine written by Kanchana is published now at http://www.ariona.com.au/magazine/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=241:kanchana-weerakoon&catid=78:environment&Itemid=315 of these.