Youth and Nature Photography

At the end of January we had two visitors from Canada. Susan and Nat Tileston. They are professional photographers who are retired .They now run a project called “My story Photo project”. They came to ECO-V as volunteers and conducted a 6 day training workshop. We selected 10 youth including few Yathrees and it was very nice to see how youth got their skills developed on Nature photography. They made a beautiful story on environmental conservation using 10 photographs as the last exercise of the training. We held an exhibition at Sarvodaya Head Quarters with their photos and stories.  Sarvodaya Vice President Mrs. Neetha Ariyaratne came as chief guest and she admired young eyes and their passion towards Nature conservation and photography.  Two reporters came to cover the training course and there is a news report on Asia News http://www.asianews.it/news-en/A-photography-course-to-protect-Sri-Lanka%E2%80%99s-environment-23980.html

At exhibition with Mrs. Neetha Ariyaratne



Teaching at classroom



making corrections of teh photos taken by prticipants

more practical

Practicles in the Natural environmnet

There are more news on this training session on our face book  http://www.facebook.com/groups/119363511453200/

and on Susan’s blog http://msppa2012colombo.blogspot.com/2012/02/of-lunches-in-paper-and-slrs.html?spref=fb

KNY - Workshop for Yathrees……..on youth and Climate change

January was a busy month for ECO-V. We invited all the youth who participated in Kelani Nadee Yathra (KNY) for a two day residential work shop on Climate Change. 16 Yathrees out of 21 participated. Some Yathrees had University exams and two of them could not make it due to a private family function. 

It was very productive two days we spent in Colombo. I was able to share lot of information I gathered during my training in Sweden on Climate Change mitigation and adaptation in October 2011. 

Imala talking to others

One hour DVD movie on journey and sharing post journey experiences, challenges they faced after the river journey was more fun and refreshing for all of us. Yoga sessions, experiencing nature, giving more leadership skills were part of the training. We too discussed future plans. They all were trained to conduct a public survey on existing knowledge on Climate change at grass route level in their home towns.

It was very nice to see Selva and Newton from North province again who are out of rehabilitation camps. They were more relaxed, actively involved and shared their experience after Kelani Nadee Yathra without the help from a Translator.

All the yathrees went back with the promise to expand their projects more with the knowledge they gained during two days. We hope to have them again to showcase their success in an exhibition in Colombo soon.

Niwton explaining

During sessions

 

During night-informal learning