The CWE Programme and the importance of building networks

By Kanishk Srinivasan | While working under the banner of Dakshin’s Community Wellbeing and Environment Programme, a significant chunk of our work in the last few months has been building collaborations and partnerships with other organisations, activists and experts in the various fields that we’re attempting to work in. To provide a few examples, the Health team has built collaborations with community based organizations and youth groups active in our field sites in South Andaman and Odisha. The health and livelihoods sub-programmes have also brought Dr Abhijit Das and Venkatesh Salagrama on board as advisors to learn from their expertise in these areas and to improve programme planning and implementation.

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What’s brewing at Current Conservation?

By Devathi Parashuram and Greta Ann Sam | A lot, as it turns out. How is it already 2022?! Last year was action-packed for Team CC. We brought out three issues of the magazine: 15.1 and 15.2 which are, as always, freely available for download on the website. And 15.3, which was a special issue on ‘African conservation today: New trends, perspectives and opportunities’, guest edited by Fred Nelson and Gladys-Kalema Zikusoka, and launched in December 2021 at the 30th International Congress for Conservation Biology. 
Due to the volume of high quality submissions we have been receiving and the limited space in the quarterly print magazine, we are publishing more and more online-only articles. As a result of this, the total number of articles we published in 2021 was more than double that of 2020.

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How Literacy and Numeracy Will Help Save the Environment

By Karishma Modi | Sea-turtles brought Dakshin Foundation to the Andman and Nicobar Islands (ANI) and Odisha. Over time, it became more and more apparent that the complete well-being of communities in close physical, economic and cultural proximity to the oceans and other marine ecosystems needed to be prioritised by any organisation with a long-standing connection to a place. Dakshin Foundation’s Environmental Education (EE) and Community Well-being and Environment (CWE) Programmes do just that: prioritise communities in the coastal and island geographies of India. Our interventions, that problematise education and practices related to health in these communities, are responding to community needs and building solutions from the ground up.

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A Life Full of Uncertainties

By Anand Rao, Biswa Swaroop and Madhuri Mondal | The well-being of the small-scale fishing communities across our coasts are increasingly threatened by dwindling livelihoods, decreasing access to coastal commons due to poor developmental plans, lesser food security and nutrition, and poor access to healthcare. In 2019, Dakshin Foundation conducted a scoping study in Odisha and South Andaman to understand the wellbeing needs of the fishing communities. These studies raised critical points regarding the health and safety of the fishers and their families. We have grouped them into the following two categories: Health issues faced by fishing communities;
Health & safety issues faced at sea

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