In the buffer zone of the Kanha Tiger Reserve, 907 mothers from 39 Mata Samitis (Mothers’ Committees) have transformed informal discussions into organised community action — repairing classrooms, improving school attendance, and pushing local authorities to deliver change.
A biodiversity programme in the buffer zone of Kanha Tiger Reserve is finding that when teaching starts from what families already know, ecological learning, cultural practice and community participation strengthen one another.
What began as a conversation about a leaking classroom in Madhya Pradesh became a catalyst for a wider process that has, over time, brought together over 1,000 mothers across 39 Mothers’ Committees – reshaping schools, homes and futures in the buffer zone of the Kanha Tiger Reserve.
Malti didn’t join Earth Focus looking for a career. She came from a village on the edge of the Kanha Tiger Reserve, where fields thin into imposing sal trees and the road transitions abruptly into a forest trail. Her family cultivated a small patch of land and gathered what the forest allowed: mahua in spring, […]
How Earth Focus uses drones, digital tracking, and local stewardship to restore land and secure livelihoods in Kanha Tiger Reserve’s buffer zone
“I have fallen completely in love with Kanha. Ab toh mujhe baahar hi nahi aana,” Shikha says. She isn’t quite speaking; she is almost singing, as though the forest itself taught her the rhythm Shikha comes from Haryana’s Hisar Jat community, a family of teachers from the agrarian plains. She was the first girl from […]
A flash of orange, a startled deer, a growl, then teeth and blood—the tiger’s presence is abrupt and dramatic—a cinematic burst of danger: It is typically encountered from a safe distance, framed in safari literature as a spectacle, on warning signs as a threat, and in news headlines as an object of fear. The prevailing […]
https://idronline.org/article/agriculture/photo-essay-what-stands-in-the-way-of-indias-millet-revolution/ Despite strong policy signals, millet farmers lack the necessary infrastructure and support to address the challenges faced in harvesting, processing, and storing the grains. India spearheaded the United Nations’ resolution to designate 2023 as the International Year of Millets. This was in honour of the small-seeded grasses that have been cultivated and consumed in the […]
Around 10,000 years ago, human beings experienced a paradigm shift in their existence that led to the birth of modern civilisation – agriculture. Sheltered by the stable, fertile conditions of the Holocene epoch, communities bloomed around the cultivation of land; a marked change from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of preceding years. Today, as our planet experiences […]
Empowering Indigenous Mothers:The ‘Mata Samiti’ Initiative Revolutionizing Education in Kanha LandscapeBy – Mohit Shukla and Prashant Parsai
