Avni Yadav and Ishan Bhavsar have made a difficult commitment: to promote vermicompost in Ahmedabad as a means to reducing trash. After completing the Volunteer Ahmedabad Service and Leadership Course, the dedicated volunteers were determined to continue contributing to their communities. With the help of worm experts Dev Tayde and Falgunni Sachdev (Indicorps staff), they hunted down earthworms to kick off their project. By organically composting food waste through the vermicomposting technique, they are hoping to make Ahmedabad a haven for gardening and environmental consciousness.

They young volunteers have started their experiment on the Indicorps office terrace as well as at volunteer Ishan’s home. While they learned their first lesson the hard way – earthworms don’t like the harsh Ahmedabad sun – they are determined to keep learning and eventually hit the streets, apartment complexes and schools to promote the easy concept of vermicompost!

These young volunteers have two very important things on their side: a deep understanding of gardening as well as the passion to make Ahmedabad an environmentally friendly place to live! If you have suggestions or would like to get involved, contact Avni and Ishan at va@indicorps.org.

Behrampura Kids Explore Science City

Every so often throughout the evening on July 8, a shout to “get back into your numbered line!!� could be heard throughout Ahmedabad’s Science City exploration park. 17 kids, ages 4-16, would scamper anxiously back into a misshapen line, reeling with excitement. Thanks to the relentlessness of Indicorps Fellow Shaila Parikh (August 06), for three hours, science and learning came alive for a group of kids who don’t often get the chance to touch, smell, run and explore the world of learning. The children are residents of the community Shaila has been living in and working with over the past ten months. Every week, three times a week, the kids come together for an interactive education course in which Shaila brings reading, science, math and their community to life for the kids. A group of these kids, a few chaperones from the community, Shaila and Indicorps staff member Archana Patel spent the evening on Sunday running through the energy park, learning about forms of matter and watching an IMAX movie on space exploration. Highlights for the kids included a slide-turned-treadmill that demonstrated concepts of force and played music when enough friction was created, a human hamster wheel and a series of fountains and watermills that showed the force of water.

Applications for the January 2008 Indicorps Fellowship program will be available on August 1, 2007. Our newly empowered project development team, led by Dev Tayde, Vijay Ramchandani, and Shishir Sawant are hard at work traversing India in search of innovative grassroots projects that will be part of the January and August 2008 programs. Stay tuned.