Welcome & Introductions Thread

General
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Namaste everyone.
My name is Malvikaa. A little (too much) about me.
I spent my early years in a village, rearing silkworms, milking buffaloes, sowing paddy, growing melons and bananas. Later on, I lived in the city working with non-profits at the policy and grassroots level with women and children on issues of ecology, environment, livelihood, health and gender. I also worked as a research scholar, studying the ecology of lakes and water bodies at the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore.

I strive to live life conscientiously and in harmony with the environment. Towards achieving this, I realized that I couldn’t do it alone. That is when I started to look at various possibilities of building communities that are progressive, inclusive, self-reliant and sustainable. That was the birth of ‘swaYYam’, an idea that lingered for years but came into formal existence on Dec 2nd, 2011. After years of wading through the city life I realized it was time to move back to the land, back to the roots in 2014. Open Shell Farm was started since and as on 2020 in its 7th year is a fully functional and a demonstration farm for Regenerative Practices using Permaculture and Agroecolgy principles. www.swayyam.org

In 2016, a severe drought in our area caused the death of up to 80% of the livestock. Swayyam initiated the community project - 1000 Tree Project in response to this crisis. The project works towards regenerating denuded farmlands through regenerative agroforestry and polyculture Systems.

We’re being supported by Zerodha on this journey and its heartening to see this lovely bunch here who bring in creative and collaborative energies (synergies) to enable solutions and change.

I am here to collaborate, co-create, learn, share and work towards affecting the change the world so badly needs.

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22

Hey everyone

Nice initiative to bring the Green Revolution!

I am Anshul from Jind, Haryana (the cotton country you can say). I have been taking some initiatives with my collegemates to bring a potion of farming to everyone’s home including fun-filled gardening as well. This is not to earn money out of it but to promote farming in general and also to bring awareness to the public about it.

This will definitely add up to the quality of life we live in tier-3, tier-2, tier-1 cities, and also sustainable.

Happy to contribute to the community in whatever possible way!

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A very nice initiative Sameer. Off late, I have seen awareness about climate change rise among the populace…and I am happy it’s happening atleast now. Reforestation as a service is the best way to counter the growing carbon footprint, although other sister-steps do need to be taken.

I am Munmun, co-founder at MN Studio. We are into user research, UX and UI. And sustainability is one of the domains we work in. Having worked with a few platforms and products like Earth Hero and Warmd already, I am now looking forward to using my expertise at a more grassroot level. I look forward to being part of and collaborating over initiatives here.

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Appreciate you sending this link across to me Sameer.

My name is Kunal Kapoor and I have been working in the space of Nature centric Learning crucibles, Natural Resource Management, Green Livelihood, Disease Prevention, and Community development as a Co-Founder and Director at the Sumiran Ecological Foundation. This should be last week here and I am talking to like minded folks to work across various states in India.

As a director at Sumiran, I work and learn with a diverse group of people and am setting up a food forest on 310 acres, 40 kms outside of Bhopal, at Barkheda Bazyaft in Sehore district in M.P.

I have posted a few pics of the village on Instagram under kunalkapoor_ant

Before co-founding Sumiran, I have been a researcher, engineer, and teaching assistant.

Thank you.

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Namaste Samir, Divya and the RainMatter Team,

I am Arvind Kamath (no blood relations with Nithin Kamath … but in spirit - YES) and I am an Advisor to Happy World Foundation - Not for Profit Trust based out of Jayanagar - Bangalore and registered in 2013.

I have quit the corporate world in my mid 40s after serving companies like IBM, HP, Infosys, Unisys etc. to follow my calling in the social sector. I was associated with Shankar Mahadevan Trust as the Country Head briefly for about 1.5 years before taking up Advisory role at Happy World Foundation. I am extremely passionate to contribute towards some of these social causes, that directly or indirectly affect us, viz. Environment, Rural Education, Women Empowerment and Rural Livelihood.

The NGO is small and struggling on many aspects especially funding, recruitment of employees to play key roles and volunteers. Despite these hurdles it has planted more than 5,000 tree saplings so far, in and around Bengaluru. #LakshyaVruksha initiative was launched in June 2020 to plant One Lac Trees by 2021 and so far more than 2,000 trees have been planted, as part of this drive.

The NGO was also in the news during the COVID induced lockdown, when more than 5,300 under-served and migrants were provided with Grocery kits, food packets etc. ; atleast 6 Government Hospitals were provided with contactless hand sanitisers ; more than 300 Auto rickshaw drivers were provided with hand sanitiser kits ; more than 2,000 face masks were distributed in rural areas served by the NGO.

Happy World Foundation has launched Project JnanaShala in September 2020 to help rural children attend online classes at the Community centres equipped with Smart TVs and Miracast Projectors. The project is currently running in 5 villages located in Kanakapura Taluk. Phase 2 of the project launched on 11th Jan 2021, focuses on a) providing sessions on “Values and Character” to young kids aged 8-12 through Storytelling and b) Women empowerment based sessions to encourage rural women take up new skills and become self employed.

To know more about the People behind the NGO and the Projects, please visit the website https://HappyWorldFoundation.org or FB page https://www.facebook.com/Happyworldfoundationbangalore for more details.

The NGO needs support from all like minded people and hope this forum will help achieve the goals and objectives. Thank You.

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26

Thank you Rainmatter team for giving an opportunity to the people of-nature to express themselves through Grove.

I believe, Nature has been an afterthought in all our activities for far too long.
And now, with the increased awareness on the issues that we face, like climate change, endangerment of species, pollution, among others, more and more people are developing an inclination to contribute to nature and a better future. And that’s extremely encouraging.

Also, contribution to nature has evolved to being more than just monetary aid. And we felt the need to bring all the action around nature happening now and expected to be in future at one place - by bringing the nature community together. In turn - Bringing nature to the centre-stage.

I am Amit Banka, a passionate nature lover, leading a startup, WeNaturalists (WeNaturalists.com), which is an ecosystem for people from around the world, connected by their passion for nature. It provides specialised tools where individuals and organisations can collaborate for different ideas, work, and research ; unite and contribute to environmental causes, find solutions and work towards them at global-local level ; share knowledge, learn new skills and debate on important matters ; inspire, be inspired, and get recognized for their contribution - all at one place.

More than 500mn people and 10mn+ organizations work in the field of nature, WeNaturalists is a space for all these individuals and organizations, beyond geographies or social construct. [The Story on Medium - https://link.medium.com/10r3kCdY2cb]

Everyone associated with nature, professionals, and enthusiasts - from forest rangers to conservationists, wildlife photographers to researchers, nature guides to academicians, zoologists to media professionals, NGOs, and charities to businesses, educational institutes to the eco-tourism sector will belong here.

I have spent quite sometime in building businesses while working with leading organisations and through my entrepreneurial journey. Have also been fortunate to lead Swades Foundation, which works on holistic living solutions for the underprivileged in western Maharashtra.

This, I found is one way to be a catalyst to drive a change and work towards a nature-positive economy - by bringing the people-of nature together.

With my participation here, I am looking forward to learn, exchange ideas, be inspired with the amazing stories from everyone here and be helpful in any manner I can. Please do provide your feedback on our work so that we can improve upon our offerings.

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27

Hi everyone.
I was introduced to this site by a friend Kunal Kapoor who i believe has studied with Sameer.
I am 62 years old, have spent more than 30 years in the corporate world and the last 15 in the so called alternate world. Have made attempts to create a community of purpose at Bhopal(www.sumiran.org) and have dabbled in many initiatives aimed at same or similar intent as Rainmatter Foundation.
Looking forward to some deep conversations and some actions.
Rajinder Raina

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28

Hello,

Thank you Rainmatter for introducing me to Grove. I am Ajay from Magasool http://magasool.org/. Magasool works with small and marginal farmers in Tamil Nadu to reduce input costs and increase productivity.

I am very keen to learn about low cost ways to reforest degraded agricultural lands.I also worry a lot about making agriculture sustainable for farmers. Would love to get ideas from people here.

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Appreciate you joining this forum Rajinder

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Ajay just read about Magasool and your own journey from Physics to MF/ Agriculture: very inspiring. Syed Hussain (Kishan) Siraj at 5 Minutes near Chennai is doing incredible work with farmers, wondering are you associated with his network?

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@sameershisodia Rajinder has been a mentor, angel investor, and well wishes at Sumiran for years. He has dabbled with several experiments going on in the space of agriculture, education, livelihood and communities. At 62 he almost has gone into hibernation and I had to coax him to come on over here. I hope he can contribute with his nuggets of wisdom via tons of experiments over these last 15 odd years. Thanks

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Hi Rajinder Rana ji. Great to know of your dedicated efforts.
I am based in New Delhi , working consistently towards greening areas around me.
Would love to connect with you on call
My whatsapp number 91-9811252095
Promila Kapoor
[email protected]

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Promila ji, best to call Rajinder Ji directly at +91 97536 68470. He is pretty busy right now and hardly checks emails/ messages. Thanks

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Good day, Rahul Raghavan here from Bengaluru. I’m a Music Composer, Music Educator and Rotarian. Rainmatter initiatives, I’m sure will act as platforms to educate us and call us to action. Looking forward to imparting the same energy amongst my students, peers and family.

If there are ways I could help, you could reach out to me at [email protected]. Volunteers and Multimedia are areas I might be able to contribute in, positively.

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I am Abhay Bhargava, chemical engineer from IIT Kanpur 1976 and invited by Mr Dinesh Pai to join this group. I am keen to promote distributed Sewage treatment as everyone’s responsibility for converting this waste into a resource for our youngsters to get green sports ground to hone their skills better, to our drought area farmers to be the “owner” of this 365 days water resource and STAV (small towns and villages) to recharge their ground water resources. Proven technology is available overseas and can be brought to India at affordable costs. Power consumption is about 0.6 KWH per M3 of water processed. This can have much bigger impact than water harvesting or digging wells (better option is to have ponds and support fish farming with water treatment technology to produce disease free fish - 2-3 crops per year but phased out to generate income per week, like in dairy).
when people tell me that they got brackish water in their well, I tell them that you are lucky as you can grow prawns and sell/export at prices of Rs 400 per Kg + with 3-4 crops per year. Income can be doubled and nutrition level would go up.
There can be many more green issues that are being addressed, based on my past experience. Reforestation is being discussed with Tata Sons for their mining areas and we can offer them technology and solutions for the problems faced by them. Some discussions with Cambay region in Gujarat with saline land, to promote prawn farming as well as reforest the area for livelihood.

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Hi Shameek
I have become a big fan of Farmizen.
In Pune a small group of well intentioned farmers and consumers want to do the same. Can I have your email or phone so that we can connect.
I have been involved in regenerative processes for last 12 years in Barkheda(www.sumiran.org)

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Dear Rajinder,

I am at 9632107744 on Whatsapp and shameekc @ gmail

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Hi, this is Omprakash Jain, from Bangalore. I tried in my life to increase Age/ size of businesses. Had observed from the last decade and a half due to consolidation many small businesses have closed down and in comings days it will further reduce small businesses. Would like to volunteer in social entrepreneurship. My background is in finance.

Thanks & Regards

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Hi all,

Guess am late here. Anyways. Have been keen observer of how things work in nature. By profession should have been repairing TV’s and radios earlier and computer system later. Instead into natural history, forestry, water conservation, soil conservation, wildlife conservation. One might wonder how could one be into all these. Exactly that is my interest all these are interconnected. The critical part that I wish to learn more is nutrient cycle in an eco system.

I volunteered for wildlife conservation in pristine forests around Mysore(Karnataka). Took up a few projects to protect forest from host of threats such plastic pollution, disturbance, fire, Human wildlife conflict mitigation, conducted numerous outreach programs to diverse target audience. Some amount of activism. Insuring and motivating field staff.Later as a field consultant at a major NGO in wildlife conservation for few more years. Have been able to pull of major gains for wildlife and forests in these projects

This experience has been a life turner to me in way I understood the challenges, social dynamics, beuracacy etc. As it goes in this duration, heard and read a lot about tree planting drives. As in my field experience it was clear that planting tree sapling is the start not the end. That’s when I wanted to get into the into the world of growing a forest.

I joined TVC to learn the intracasies of growing a forest. Growing trees in a degraded landscapes is a tuff job believe me. It is not just planting. Over the years have explored, discovered many ways to increase survival, like raising saplings at site, selection of tree species making best use of available resources, reading the land. Understanding the threats or actions that actually degraded the land.

Currently working on a project in Mysore on growing native trees in a layout and it’s parks and am associated with TVC (Tamarind valley collective).

I am interested in taking up execution and or consulting for reforestation,tree planting projects, collective farming, agro forestry projects, outreach and awareness programs.

Would be keen to ask and know more and share my learnings so far.

Thanks

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Hi All,
I am Kapil Sharma , Founder of SayTrees.org
What started with a mission to bring back lost green cover of Bangalore has now turned into a country wide initiative to grow trees and ensure they are safe. Have been consistently trying to fight climate change since last 14 years and ready to give tough fight to the same in decade to come.
I am happy know about all you amazing people out there and willing to learn as much as I can while I share my journey.

Thanks.

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