Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) works in diverse environments: from coral reefs to tropical rainforests, wetlands to deserts, and coasts to high mountains. Since 1996 NCF has been exploring, understanding, and conserving the natural world through research and responsible engagement with society. We engage deeply with our places of work and the people who live there. This informs our research, helps build strong connections with communities, and provides insights into conservation approaches that are ecologically meaningful and respectful of local and societal needs and concerns. Our vision is a world in which nature and society flourish together.

In 2012 Wipro partnered with NCF to take the benefits of creative intersections of our work to school children and larger audiences and build on the existing education and public engagement activities of NCF. Wipro’s support enabled a new program to be created within NCF to take these efforts forward: the Education and Public Engagement Programme (EPE). Through this program, we have been working towards increasing the connection between people and nature. We have engaged with both children and adults in various ways, including helping them make their discoveries, observations, and fascination for wild nature. We have also developed, displayed, and distributed nature education material primarily for children; and have researched and written about nature for a young audience. We initially started working with schools via an active citizen science program - SeasonWatch - on trees, seasonality, and climate change. While the nature material we were producing was used a lot, teachers and educators often asked how they could also introduce nature education programs in their school spaces and invite us to help them address this.

These interactions, conversations, and our experience with creating content on nature for different audiences made us realize that we had to engage more directly and deeply within the school education space. In late 2018 partnering with Wipro Foundation, we started to work on developing Nature Classrooms, a project that works closely with primary school teachers and educators to connect learning to the natural world. We have been developing user-friendly nature learning resources that are age-appropriate, locally, and culturally relevant and encourage children to engage with nature through hands-on and inquiry-based learning. These resources correspond to existing primary school Environmental Studies (EVS) curricula and can be integrated into classroom teaching. Also, we conduct capacity-building workshops for school teachers and educators across different organizations. We collaborate with these educators to develop and offer creative pedagogical approaches in nature learning both within and outside school classrooms.

To maximize access to our learning resources and pedagogical tools, we are in the process of developing a website for our content. Besides hosting our content, we want to create a space of learning and discussion around EVS and Nature Learning through blogs and articles written by teachers and featuring resources created by other organizations and educators.

NCF consists largely of people with training and experience in wildlife sciences, conservation, and ecology; therefore, our educational interventions were often based on these skill sets, understanding.

Meeting, interacting, and having long conversations with other Wipro partner organizations and individuals during the Wipro Partners’ meets and brainstorming sessions with the Wipo team helped us understand how they worked in education using different domains theatre, sports, arts, language. Wipro supported us when about three years back when we started to seriously think of how we can engage in a much more sustained manner within the school system, taking advantage of the fact that Environmental Studies is a compulsory subject in Primary Schools.

What also helped was that Wipro was supporting two other conservation organizations based in Bangalore. Organizations working in the nature education space decided that it would be beneficial to have collaborative workshops to engage with and develop some relevant understanding and skills in education theory, practice, and approaches. Experts in the field facilitated these workshops.

Early on in our work, going through training sessions helped us situate, plan how we approached our work in nature learning. As part of our work, we currently also regularly consult and brainstorm with people who are education professionals.

Swadhar IDWC (Swadhar) was started in Pune in 1995 for women in distress and underprivileged children. At Swadhar, we believe that education is the only means of empowerment and should be available for all.

In 1998, Swadhar found many out-of-school children in slum areas around Pune city who did not have access to education. We decided to start Project Akshardeep by conducting free alternate school classes for these children and encouraging them to join the regular school eventually.

Akshardeep started with Setu/bridge class for out of school children and expanded the intervention such as ECCED (Early Childhood Care, Education, and Development) for birth to 6 years age group, Balwadi for 3 -6 years age group, RTE act awareness with parents and community, E-learning for 8 to 16 years' children and reading class program into Government and private school for students from 1st to 4th standard.

Wipro has supported us for our Educational Support Program in PMC and PCMC area since 2015 to date. It has not only supported the project financially, but volunteers of Wipro cares have actively engaged with all stakeholders through various activities, i.e., Wipro Run, Music event, donation camps, festival celebration at the center, participation in events.

Through the Wipro education partners' network, Swadhar was exposed to many other NGOs working in the Education sector and got opportunities to attend capacity-building workshops such as Designing and Facilitating Effective Learning Experience, Foundations of Education webinar on National Education Policy, etc. We also found the Annual Partners' Forum event very helpful, where Wipro partners shared their experiences and learning.

Website: www.swadharpune.org

On Social Media: Facebook Instagram Twitter Linkedin

Vision Empower (www.visionempowertrust.org), incubated at IIITB Bangalore in August 2017, works to make education accessible and inclusive for students with visual impairment, with a special focus on STEM subjects.

As a Wipro Seeding Fellowship recipient since December 2017, the VE core team could sustain the organization's activities while in the research and pilot stage. Over the last three years, the VE projects have ranged from accessible content creation for teachers and students with blindness, training, and support of teachers with blindness on Science, Maths, and Digital Literacy and creating an accessible Computational Thinking curriculum for students with visual impairment through games. VE has also focused on developing technologies such as Subodha - an accessible Learning Management System, and Hexis - an affordable refreshable Braille display for children.

VE has been a Wipro-grantee since December 2020, which has enabled the core team to focus on Early Childhood requirements for the development of children with visual impairment and strengthen the solutions created and take them to more children. In 2021-22, VE received approval to work with the government of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Tripura to meet the needs of inclusive education for students with visual impairment.

Being part of the Wipro network has been enriching in terms of knowledge sharing from NGOs working on the country's unique and diverse educational needs. Wipro has fostered our team's capacity-building through multiple training engagements such as Jodogyan training or the OD course from Azim Premji University. One can also gain insights and read about inspiring accounts from the network's ongoing activities in the Samuhik Pahal newsletter. Among other things, we wait for Wipro's annual event as it gives us time to step out of our limited boundaries and mingle with other organizations. Simultaneously, it also helps us introspect on the work done and plan in a structured way.

Samerth Charitable Trust was founded to capacitate people and institutions to live a life of dignity. Samerth works in Ahmedabad and Kutch in Gujarat and eight districts of Chhattisgarh. The core domains we work on are Education, Water, Disability, and Livelihood.

We partnered with Wipro in 2017, and it has been an enriching journey for our team and the communities where we work. The initial ideation support from the Wipro Foundation team helped us build a robust program rooted in the community. Their focus on building the capacities of our team helped us strengthen and develop their skills and perspectives. The Wipro education network introduced and provided access to interesting innovations in the program, training, and pedagogy levels. The learning and rigor developed through this association have helped Samerth as an organization to push its limits and grow beyond them.

On Social Media:

https://www.facebook.com/samerthcharitabletrust/ https://www.instagram.com/samerthcharitabletrust/