Nature Club activities

·                    Sunday activities for the nature club members for school children includes slide and video shows, tours around the Croc Bank and creative sessions are followed by discussions. These members also use the puppet theater for presenting short stories on environment.. and these programmes have been very successful with 30- 40 school children regularly coming to the Croc Bank on their own initiative for the Sunday programmes.

·                    Nature workshops are conducted regularly and these included themes on    ‘Neighborhood biodiversity’, reptiles and marine turtles and various other environmental themes. Seventeen such  workshops were organized for school children and village youth.

Nature camps

Camps at Croc Bank are organized for schools, colleges and other NGOs. Camps range from one to three days and are attended by school children, college students and NGOs from Chennai, local village schools, schools and colleges from other states.

Mobile exhibition

Marine turtle Mobile exhibitions were conducted along the East Coast road for school children and villagers. This exhibition was taken to villages and the programme included talks on the conservation of marine turtles and their nesting beaches, poster display, discussions and turtle walks. These exhibitions were held during the peak turtle nesting season along the east coast.

Puppet Theater

As a new addition to the Croc Bank EE programmes, a simple multi theater for awareness generation was constructed. Various forms of puppetry that include shadow, string, rod and glove are used in this theater. Puppetry, a traditional art form, is currently being used by MCBT as an environmental education tool. Regular workshops and sessions were conducted on the concept of puppetry in environmental education. Currently participants use the theater to promote messages and concepts on conservation of nature with emphasis on reptiles and their role in ecosystems.

Other activities

Workshops on palmleaf craft , reptiles, various environmental issues and training workshops for school teachers were conducted.

Conducting tours to other zoos for school nature club members, wildlife week celebrations, tree planting in villages; programmes for schools during the tourism festival at Mamallapuram, turtle walks, kids for tiger programmes and organising short progammes for the Chennai city school groups that visit the Croc Bank.

In the Andamans regular programmes, camps and workshops for school children and teachers were conducted. Camps at the ANET Base, tree planting in school campuses and day visits to islands were also organised for schools.

Special programmes and field trips were conducted for NGOs and groups visiting the islands from mainland India.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON  THE  NATURE CAMPS HELD AT MCBT ,CONTACT MCBT AT  mcbtindia@vsnl.net