Outreach efforts

Mural at St. Joseph's in Bhaglapur, India
(Photo: JLewis, TDRF)

Teaching children about their own local wildlife is important. If they learn to appreciate and love the animals and plants around them when young, they will be more likely to want to preserve them when they are older. All of the researchers we have followed for this film have made it a point to take time to bring the information about the animals they study to local children.

Today we head to a local school (St. Joseph’s), a K-12 school which is incredibly impressive for the location. Many of the people of Bhaglapur suffer from extreme poverty. There are not a lot of resources in this area of India. This school, established in the early 1980’s, has grown and now caters to somewhere near 4000 students. The people who developed this school and who work to continue to make it better have done incredible things. They even have created a fossil garden for the students.

Dr. Choudhary and I both get the chance to present to some of the older children about the work that each of us does with dolphins. They have great questions for us, wanting to learn all they could about dolphins while they had the chance to ask. They were aware of the Ganges dolphin (thanks in large part to the work of Dr. Choudhary) and after we finish, we get the chance to see art work they made depicting the dolphin in its habitat.

We then get a tour of the whole campus which is fantastic. Most impressive to me, is one of the ways they have decided to decorate the halls of the buildings. They have chosen many inspiring phrases that have been carved into all sort of objects and hang on the ceilings and walls everywhere.

Sign in St. Joseph's, Bhaglapur, India (Photo: Jlewis, TDRF)