Water Matters: Transforming Impending Water Crisis

So far, we've hosted three half-day workshops with three local schools on Water Matters. The days started in the forests of Auroville, where we talked to the children about the importance of the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest project and how it relates to water retention and recharging of the aquifers under the land. We planted saplings with the children for some time, explaining why reafforestation is important in its relationship to replenishing the aquifers, and many children exclaimed they'd never worked on something like that before! After the forest, we took the children on a tour through the Water Matters program - a series of booths with different informative posters and speakers on various topics related to water conservation and restoration. We walked with them through different booths that explained water treatment systems, alternative ways to save water, maps of the bioregion and the water bodies here, and ended with a fun, informative play put on by the team members. Then the children had lunch in the community and we had some informal conversations with them about the experiences they've had personally with collecting water and reusing it efficiently in their homes. After lunch, we taught the kids a song in Tamil one of the community members wrote, called 'Thaneer Illei' (No Water), in hopes that the catchy tune and its message would stay with them even after they'd left the workshop.