We are currently teaching rainwater harvesting at Nammashale school, Bangalore. Ms Rama and Mr Ramjee approached us to develop a curriculum and teach children the basics of conserving water. The students are aged between 12-14 (classes 7th and 8th). Nammashale follows a slightly different teaching system as compared to the mainstream schools. It can broadly be summed up as “cosmic education”. In this, one avoids the regular demarcations of subjects and instead students are encouraged to try and find connections or look at the “bigger picture”. So for instance when we talk about water quality and introduce the idea of water being acidic or basic, the school ensures that in the coming days, the chemistry teacher will also elaborate further on this concept. Thereby it is easy to see how a concept learned in one area is being applied in another sphere.
We teach 2 classes a week of two hours each. To begin with we tried to familiarise the students with the water situation in their school. We asked them to map out the water facilities within their own campus and also try and estimate how much water they were actually using for different activities like gardening, washing, kitchen etc.
We then looked at the sources of water. Nammashale gets its water from a tanker supplier who in turn uses a borewell as his source of water. We explained the basics of groundwater and even made a visit to the tanker water supplier.
Students learning where their water comes from
Here is a video of Avinash from Biome explaining the fundamentals of grounwater
www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9WFBX9p0MY
Our final aim is to have a working rainwater harvesting system installed on the campus and for the students to play a large role in setting this up. This week we will freeze on a plan to harvest rain and then begins the implementation :)
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