Kaikondrahalli Kere Habba 2019

The fifth annual Kere Habba at Kaikondrahalli lake, was held this past Sunday, February 17th. It was a sunrise to sunset event, the day started at 6 am with bird watching, and ended with a music concert at 6pm. The habba had other events like a 5K run, a film making workshop, a conference on lake rejuvenation and a science activities center for kids, to name a few. There was a designated citizen corner, where Biome Environmental Trust (Biome) along with Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) set up a stall to educate the public about the Citizen Science and Lakes Dashboard, and generally about water management. Interested citizens stopped by our stall to learn how the dashboard worked, what kind of chemicals the testing kit could analyze and how they could participate in the water quality testing of the lake water. Some wanted to know if the testing kits could be used to check the quality of water supplied by tankers to their apartments and some others wanted to know what they could do for rainwater harvesting in their homes/ apartments.

Shashank, Shubha, Suma and Sanjana at the ATREE and Biome stall

Interested students reading our wetland primer

Interested citizens learning more about water management

Saurabh from Foundation for Environmental Monitoring (FFEM) joined us to demonstrate how the smart phone based water quality testing kits could be used. All information collected from the app is directly uploaded to the lakes dashboard, which can be accessed through this link, blrlakesdashboard.org. Anyone interested in being part of the citizen group that tests the water quality at Kaikondrahalli and Kasavanahalli lake can reach out to waters@biome-solutions.com.

Saurabh from FFEM demonstrating how to use the testing kits

Water Entrepreneurs- Borewell Camera Inspection

When borewells go dry, a helpful solution is to use a camera to see inside the borewell. Borewell camera services can be used to identify the depth, the static water level and moisture areas inside the borewell. Market bought cameras are extremely expensive but water entrepreneurs such as Karthik uses LCD screens, batteries, long cables and second hand rear view cameras from cars to build their own borewell cameras. Karthik is based in Devanahalli and charges around Rs 1000 to Rs 2000 for camera inspection depending on the depth of the borewell. He can be reached on 82177 82660.

This is a picture of Karthik, a water entrepreneur based out of Devanahalli

Other entrepreneurs that provide borewell camera inspection services are:

Anil Kumar- 99726 98191
Devaraj- 98803 40290
Manjunath- 95353 21790
Ashok- 91649 81818
Madhu- 84538 44440
Murthy- 98808 15022
Munishamgouda- 97414 25280
Vijay- 91412 26452
Shivanna- 94807 07983
Ramesh- 99729 15187

Capturing Safe Water Learning with Digital Tools

16^th March 2019, Bangalore

Context

INREM foundation is working on the issue of fluoride contamination close to a year now in Bagepalli taluk, which has the highest fluoride affected habitations in the district of Chikkaballapur. Last year, we organised a stakeholders meeting where officers of education, health department, women and child welfare showed interest to train their staff with us.  

The education department was first to request and we prepared ourselves for the training. But it was postponed due to some official work. We planned to deploy our new course Fluoride ABC which is available on ForWater knowledge platform. It is a combination of 24 safe water cards to give basic information about the issue of fluorosis to learners. Last week, Mr Subhaan Saab, Senior Officer with the health department in Bagepalli informed us to do a training for their team on the 14^th March 2019.

Why are we doing this?

Over the last year, our field team members Manjula, Manjunath (former team member) and Naveen have done many training to several frontline workers using safe water cards. These trainings have been happening in their field visits i.e. in schools, angaanwadis, Primary health centre or meetings at public point in villages. But we have no clear information about learners and most importantly their understanding. A beginning is made to document such learners with the help of digital tools in our recent training.

How are we doing it?

All of us in our learning career have come across the use of OMR (Optical Mark Recognition), darkening those circles with pen/pencil used for evaluation of our learning. We are trying to integrate the same methodology in our trainings. We work in places which are often very remote, have poor access to internet and smart devices. We are trying to bridge this gap making evaluation of learners easier.

Using OMR Evaluator app, questions with multiple choice for assessing the learners was set. Right answers were marked and OMR sheet was generated. One cannot enter the questions in the app, the questions are set outside the app. The group of 20 members was divided into two groups i.e. one with doctors and other with ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwife). 24 cards in 2 rounds were circulated among the group members. Small discussion about the topics took place for about 5-7 minutes after first set of cards were completed. 

Post the discussion, questions to assess the learning were distributed among the participants. The responses of the learners were recorded in the OMR sheets. These sheets were later scanned by clicking upon the exam set created in the app. The app captures responses only by comparing with the ‘marked right answers’ and give result of the participants instantaneously. It doesn’t give wrong responses of the participant, but shows number of the right ones.

The app tabulates the results and create excel sheet with roll number, their scores, which question number is marked right or wrong using 1 and 0 coding respectively. Such excel sheets can be sent to your linked email id and simple analysis as shown below can be done.

What we learned?

• This kind of evaluation is useful to capture the learning of hundreds of participants in training, within a very short period.
• It is useful to have a pre and post quiz to capture the learning from the training. Due to last minute changes, we could not do this.
• The font of the question set generated is small. We relied on enlarging the font by doing photocopy of the original copy. The app could not capture responses in such zoomed copies. It must be enlarged in the original document using appropriate scale. This is important to ensure alignment of the borders is not disturbed and the scanning for responses is easier by the app.
• There will be confusion to assign roll numbers. In a larger group, it is advisable to assign roll numbers upfront on the sheet and give clear instructions to darkening the circles preferably with pencils.
• Other details like adding labels for collecting contact details needs to be written in the master copy.

Kiran Kumar Sen

kirankumarsen@gmail.com

  

Biome Environmental Trust at Lakshya 2019: A student led initiative of St. Joseph's College of Commerce

Biome Environmental Trust was invited to partner and collaborate with St. Joseph’s College of Commerce on an event called LAKSHYA, 2019. This is an initiative of students of St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bengaluru. This year’s event was held on 11^th January 2019. LAKSHYA is aimed at engaging students in spreading awareness and arriving at potential solutions through interesting and skill based festive events and mass platforms like the social media. The theme of LAKSHYA 2019 was underground water depletion. The event had 4-theme based competitions where the teams of 3 students from several colleges across Karnataka as well as few other states participated.

The event was very well managed. It was great to collaborate with the team. We hope to continue the partnership with further initiatives.

Glimpses of the event:

 

Display Board at Kaikondrahalli- Citizen Science Project

Biome has been a part of Citizen Science project that aims at fostering knowledge based engagement for citizens around lakes. As a part of engaging citizens, it is important to educate citizens about their lakes, it’s features, its community and about administration of the lakes. In this context, it was appropriate to have Display boards that give information installed at lakes.

Display board at Kaikondrahalli lake:

4*3 ft display board at Kaikondrahalli lake

While Biome Environmental Trust(Biome) has spearheaded this activity, MAPSAS, the lake community has provided support in terms of getting necessary approvals, providing necessary information, and providing infrastructure required for execution. 

ATREE(Ashoka Trust for Research in Environment and Ecology), has made this entire project possible by not only mobilising CSR funds from Oracle but also spearheading and driving the overall Citizen Science project. 

Biome has also worked with creative designers like Adira Andlay, who designed the display board and her creative ideas, thoughts have shown expression in the display board. The printing and installation of the display board was done by Mr. Prasad of Signhive Printers. 

Rekha Arun, the translator of text from English to Kannada has helped us reach out to a larger community by her work.

We would also like to thank BBMP for its continued support in this project.

Biome Environmental Trust

Responding to Bird kill at lakes...

Biome Environmental Trust has been involved in multiple projects in and around the lake ecosystem and has come across cases of bird kills at the lakes. We wanted to understand how one should respond to such incidents and in this context, we approached Dr. Shankar who is a senior Veterinary doctor in Bangalore. He is associated with Institute of Animal Health and Veterinary Biologicals (IAHV), Hebbal, Bangalore.

   

From our interaction with Dr. Shankar on 2^ndNovember 2018, we gathered the following:

1.     A dead bird should be taken to labs for autopsy within 16 hours after its death. However, if the dead bird is stored in Ice soon after its death, one will have about 48 hours to take it to autopsy. 

2.     He mentioned that a bird kill can happen due to many reasons and some of them are

a.     Death due to Starvation

b.     Death due to exposure to polluted/contaminated water (Chemical or sewage exposure)

c.     Old age

3.     He mentioned that when birds die in many numbers (say above 5) at the same time, that is when it requires them to conduct various tests to understand the cause of death. When the bird is taken to IAHV, an autopsy is conducted. If the cause of death is not easily detectable by an autopsy, then bacteriological, toxicological and viral tests are conducted. If certain tests cannot be conducted in their lab, then they refer the concerned party to private labs where the tests can be conducted. The cost of an autopsy and Bacteriological/Toxicological/Viral tests at IAHV are Rs. 25 and Rs. 100 respectively.

4.     During initial observation and testing, if they detect bird flu, then all the birds in that region (a few kilometers from the epicenter) is culled and the epicenter is isolated. 

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5.     He also mentioned that there are no statistics available on the number of incidents of bird kill.

Contact Information:
Dr. Shankar B P- 9844287557
IAHV- 080-23411502

Biome Environmental Trust

Contacts for Water Level Probe Sensor

HERON INSTRUMENTS

1. https://envirotechonline.com/water-level-interface-meters/water-level/heron-skinny-dipper-water-level-meter.html
2. https://www.heroninstruments.com/
3. buvanasriramulu@gmail.com

Sri Laxmi Sai Scientific Services

Gangishetti. Anil

M/S Sri Laxmi Sai Scientific Services

H.No: 2-20-3/56

Adharsha Nagar

Venkateswara Colony

Uppal Kalan

Hyderabad - 500 036

gangishetti.anil72@gmail.com