World Environmental day, Scouts and “kids and Nature” Programme

The world’s Environmental Day in 2011 for ECO-V was very special in a different way. Some founder and active members of ECO-V came to our office (Thanks to uncle Sugathadasa who brought a plant as a gift) for a meeting to discuss about our future plans. It was a very nice meeting and we all felt happy to meet on this very special day. In the afternoon I had some visitors. 

Thanks to scouts at Royal College who helped us to keep our surrounding clean

Three scouts from Royal College (42^nd Colombo - my eldest son is also a Cub Scout in the same school) came for asking some work for their community service week. It was the same day that I conducted ECO-V kids and Nature programme. One neighbor has dumped some polythene into our surroundings and I was thinking of cleaning it through our kids and Nature programme. So these three scouts were happy to help us to clean our street. I gave them a brief introduction to World environment day and how they should feel about doing some good work to Mother Earth on that very special day but I reminded them that each day should be a world environment day in our lives to protect Mother Earth. After that ECO-V kids learnt about caterpillars and butterflies and saw some eggs laid in our garden. They were surprised to see how small the butterfly eggs are…

looking for butterfly eggs

what a long day I had on the 5^th of June 2011…but it’s worth my time I spent on all these activities……Thanks for everybody who were with me.

Kelani Nadee Yatra

Kelani River just before Kithulgala

At Kosgama

Lots of ground work has been done by now thanks to Sujeewa Thalangama who helped me earlier for Sri Pada Cleaning campaign and Pelican Awareness campaign at Beire Lake. Its very encouraging seeing young energy of Sajith Peris who joined with us to have first visit along the planned route and providing us with lot of information and introducing us to many important people. Big thank goes to Dulshan ECO-V’s IT specialist who has been working very hard to put our ideas into graphic to design to make the KNY logo and the blog site. 

view of Castlereagh reservoir

So the blog site is up as http://kelaninadeeyathra.wordpress.com/

I am also trying to reconnect with many people that I couldn’t keep in touch personally when I was away from the country for a year. So it is always very nice to meet them and get their involvement too. All are very exited about this new project. So far we had 3 visits up and down checking the route (145km long) parallel to the river on the road. Sujeeva went again on his own spending few days meeting many people and getting their views and support. Many are telling us the need of a project like this and its very encouraging to see their enthusiasm.We are amazed to see the amount of water it carries and thrilled about the beauty of the natural habitats along the river specially at the beginning of the river.
Thanks to many friends (those who knew about our previous work) we had in print and electronic media the news about calling applications before 25^th June is done. Thanks to Sunday Observer as they have written a detailed article about the project. http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2011/06/05/new40.asp We are getting applications now from youth. Still meeting some potential sponsors which is the hard and time consuming part of the journey. It’s ok as that also help us to meet many interesting people and make new contacts.

Well exactly 2 more months to begin our journey along the river….