Signing off!
After an intense, roller coaster of 12 weeks in Delhi, I’m finally back in the US.
Just in time for this year’s A Better World x Design conference being hosted by RISD and Brown University, whose theme this year coincidently happens to be “Way-finding”. I was honored to be invited as one of the presenters and talk about to my incredible experience in Zamrudpur. The conference was also a great platform to interact with some truly amazing people and organizations about their works across issue, scales and locations. It is really interesting to see how that one word can have so many meanings and connotations and the countless ideas that stem from it.
In the coming months, I hope to share this work at some other platforms around Providence like DESINE-Lab’s Student lecture series, Brown & RISD’s collaborative Design+Health Seminar and RISD Landscape Department’s Spring lecture series. It will be interesting to discuss the project and the idea with fellow design community and receive valuable feedback.
Looking back, 2 months seems like a very short time to initiate a big change in the lifestyle and mindsets of people. But while short-term deliverables were set during the project, their impact was palpable soon enough and I was able to see changes myself. ‘Delhi Diary’, a local lifestyle magazine became aware of the changing face of Zamrudpur and published an article on our project. I’m still well in touch with Adhyayan and the children and keep getting updates from them. Its heartening to see that the project did not end with my leaving, they’re moving to planting winter vegetables in the beds, starting more art projects and the amazing group of girls from the neighboring Lady Sri Ram college who started off by volunteering to help with our murals around the village have started other programs with the children.
Leaving Delhi is always a bittersweet parting for me, made exceptionally hard this time. I received the sweetest goodbyes from all the children and parents and I realized just how deeply I’d been accepted into the community and their lives. If no one else, my own perceptions of such neighborhoods will never be the same.
Back in the US, I’m currently in the process of using the map created by the children to build a proper document to send to Amit in Zamrudpur. This will be a basis to discuss the more serious infrastructure problems of the community, which was never previously mapped out with respect to its physical infrastructure. Streets too narrow for the municipal trash collector trucks to traverse are highlighted, while we get a graphic document.
My summer with the community has definitely made clear my personal interests in community engaged design and place making, and the role of art and interventions as being as key to this end as pure architectural or urban design. With my relocation to Boston, and not wanting to lose touch with such projects even on the east coast, I’ve joined the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) and Boston Society of Architects’ (BSA) Lab for Art in Public Places, both great think tanks engaging in Tactical Urbanism as a means of creating democratic urban spaces. I look forward to collaborating with some great designers and thinkers on interesting projects around New England.
– Zoya
A farewell to the Porvir office, but thank-heavens for Skype!
While my time in São Paulo this summer was very busy, the work with the innova+ project is really just beginning. My role at Porvir was to get this project off the ground. I established connections with our partners, created proposals and presentations explaining the project and drafted a plan for the initiative to continue moving forward once I was back in Providence. I also understood the inner-workings of an organization whose work I had always admired from afar. As school is just about to start, I am eager to continue working on the innova+ project, but this time more as an advisor to the team of journalists. The innovations have been submitted by the network of specialists we have gathered from California to London to New Zealand, and now it’s the journalists’ turn to take over in editing our content.
Before leaving, I also contacted a talented graphic designer (and self-taught web developer) to take on the job of creating the site for the final publication. Though our deadlines have shifted a bit more down the road, we hope to have the publication ready to go by the end of October. I will keep updating this blog with important news along the way, and of course, on the big day of the publication release.
Group selfie at the office
Invitation to our specialists
Some reflections on the topic of my research: What is innovation anyway?
I spent a good chunk of time this summer trying to define the term “innovation.” While I didn’t come upon any answers that I felt passionate about, my search has helped me understand some of my own concerns regarding education and the role of “changemaking” in a fast-paced world, where technology is making big moves and potentials for scalability of projects are expanding exponentially.
After much deliberation, we decided to let each contributing specialist give his or her own definition of innovation when submitting their suggested projects. This way, we will also learn how people define this concept, and embrace the idea that there may simply not be an answer to this question. In my own research for this semester, I plan to reflect on my experiences, both at RISD and beyond, to understand how I have applied my own design background into projects that will make a difference in the world. Designers are at a critical point in the working world, as we are trained to navigate between spheres of communication. To me, using innovative approaches to communicate ideas, solutions or even just a thought is the best application of design toward making a difference. The key is understanding all the components, and finding the best means to pull the parts together, making everything accessible to the players involved.
Below are a few of the definitions I came upon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation
Innovation is about finding a better way of doing something.[1] Innovation can be viewed as the application of better solutions that meet new requirements, in-articulated needs, or existing market needs.[2] This is accomplished through more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments and society. The term innovation can be defined as something original and, as a consequence, new, that “breaks into” the market or society. A definition consistent with these aspects would be the following: “An innovation is something original, new, and important in whatever field that breaks in to a market or society”.[3]
While something novel is often described as an innovation, in economics, management science, and other fields of practice and analysis it is generally considered a process that brings together various novel ideas in a way that they have an impact on society.
Innovation differs from invention in that innovation refers to the use of a better and, as a result, novel idea or method, whereas invention refers more directly to the creation of the idea or method itself.
Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different rather than doing the same thing better.
I will continue to elaborate on my definition, but will allow it to happen organically. Afterall, the “lightbulb moment” is a glorious one, but the process is where the magic happens.
DC goes 3D
The NIH 3D Print Exchange is an open source platform for sharing medical and biological 3D models.
My colleague Corey Kilbane and I were experimenting with photogrammetry to 3D scan some of the museum objects on display.
Michael Weinberg presenting about copyright and 3D printing.
Installing signage and steering conversations
As I enter the final weeks of my stay in Delhi and my engagement with Adhyayan, it’s really inspiring to see a distinct pattern of our interventions in the community.
This week we finally completed our big consolidated map of the village. The original piece is a 5’x4’ compilation incorporating the handiwork of many children at Adhyayan. Once the final piece was completed, I scanned and did a few layers of editing to make it printable. As a test, we have created two billboards versions of the community map to be installed at two of the 4 entrances in to the community. If successful, we will be adding more in the coming days.
An important aspect of my work has been to include the residents and seniors in whatever activity we engage the children with. For a project that involves a whole community, it is imperative to have an active participation of every group involved whether it is the children, the adults, the aged, men and women. Each group brings its own thoughts, strengths and limitations and is thus vital for the sustainability of any intervention. In our biweekly community meetings, I tried to bring to the discussions, different phases and issues that we have been trying to address.
This week’s meeting’s agenda was the claiming of ownership of the streets. It was a topic that we bring up time and again; to counter the disassociation and unaccountability of the littering problem but this week we were able to support the message with process images and results of our ‘art-bombing’ intervention. This was an experiment that received a mixed response. While on one hand, the residents love the art the children are creating in the streets, and its come to my knowledge that people have even approached them offering to hire them as profession mural artists to work on spaces in and outside their homes and businesses. Many residents on whose properties we created these murals, have taken great pride in the work and have taken ownership of the space, maintaining it, as its something created by their (the village’s) children. However, there were some spaces where despite our hard work of changing its character, in full view of the surrounding businesses, got reduced back to being an easy target for collecting garbage and betel nut spitting. It is an issue that I need to reevaluate our strategy towards.
In this meeting we also ‘unveiled’ the map in front of the community. It was a project that had required walking a tightrope of dealing with the historical monuments present within the community. We wanted to celebrate the rich heritage and history of the village by the presence and association of the 15th century Mughal structures present on site, while being careful of the delicate nature of their present status and the ‘illegal’ encroachment by the local residents. As I mentioned in a previous post my personal opinions about caged monuments and active engagements, yet I understand the residents’ discomfort in coming under the authorities radar regarding their occupation of the monuments, their cowsheds etc. However, I strongly feel that there is a need to acknowledge the immense heritage in the midst of which they reside.
The map serves as a visual celebration of the village and its legacy. For a community that doesn’t even completely show up on Google Maps, being denied the very basic acknowledgement of their existence in the urban fabric of Delhi, this ‘map’ serves more than a planning record of its physical structure. In having the children draw out their spaces, we created a rich visual of the life and characteristics of the village, in their recording of their favorite snack vendor to the shoe repair man to the location of Adhyayan to the square where the elders smoke their hookahs, the life and secrets of the community is introduced to an outsider. It’s a navigational welcome into the spaces and people of Zamrudpur.
We were honored to have a dear friend and mentor, Ravi Gulati join us for the meeting. He is the founder and head of an organization, Manzil for the past 20 years working on a host of issues in and around Delhi. Amit who founded Adhyayan was himself a student of Ravi bhaiya and started the organization as an offshoot of Manzil with a wish to share his own learning. He was instrumental in connecting me with Adhyayan and offered an invaluable wealth of advice when I started working on the project.
It’s also been over four weeks since we planted our first experimental urban farming bed in the reclaimed community park within the neighborhood. Inspired by the wonderfully rich growth of our planting, we’ve started work on another bed, with the hope to strategically keep adding more. While the village residents were initially slow in accepting our initiative of urban farming on their rooftops, seeing the actual proof of the ease of growth of our demonstrational beds and the richness of our yield has raised the enthusiasm exponentially. We are getting approached every other day by some resident wanting to know more about growing organic food on their rooftops and requesting our help to set up their beds. It is this interest and initiative on the part of the community that is most encouraging and the best reward of our hard work.
– Zoya
On pesticide
One of the most challenging aspects of advocating for pollinating insects is trying to defend wasps, hornets and yellow jackets. These insects are a crucial component of our environment, however, their aggressive temperament and willingness to sting make them appear a nuisance. Companies such as Orkin, Modern Pest Services, and Bayer, have capitalized on public fear of insects by offering a cheap solution; eradication.
Two big problems exist with this philosophy. The first is that insects are a necessary part of the ecosystems that exist in lawns and gardens. Not only do they pollinate flowers creating fruits, vegetables, and healthy, diverse vegetation, they also serve as food for other animals. To cut out a colony of 20,000 or more will certainly impact a garden’s habitat. The second problem is the method used to implement mass eradication. Typically, an extremely strong pesticide is sprayed killing the entire colony. These chemicals are not only toxic to the targeted insects they are also toxic to almost every other living organism. Some of these pesticides are already in the plant, systemically grown from the seed which is a problem to be addressed later this week.
Pesticides have certainly helped increase crop yield allowing humans to produce surplus food, however, a change of attitude is needed when deciding how to manage pests on a household level. Simply put, there is no safe pesticide. There will always be collateral damage around the area treated. Therefore, it is in one’s interest to use a more environmentally friendly application; one that is less harmful both to the person applying and the insects surrounding the treatment area. Often times, these solutions are simpler and less expensive than calling the Orkin man.
- Decide if killing the insects is completely necessary. Research what the insect is and if it is providing a service to your lawn or garden. For instance, wasps are beneficial in that they prey mostly on other insects and avoid human activity. The wasp is a nuisance only when it’s nest is in a home or near a high traffic area such as a porch or lawn.
- Look into natural solutions to dealing with the pests. Is there someone less frightened that might be able to help? Is there a way to remove them without killing them? This site has some great suggestions for lots of insects: http://eartheasy.com/live_natpest_control.htm
- Often times a local beekeeper will have good insight into dealing with pests. Give one a call. Check your state beekeeping association’s website for suggestions and information on local beekeepers. Beekeepers generally appreciate old time wisdom and are usually excited to talk to someone interested in alternative ways to solve modern pest problems. Some are also licensed applicators and will do the same job as an Orkin man safer and for less money.
- Know if you have any allergies to the insects and if so, ask someone else for help.
- If you have the courage to deal with the insects on your own, know what you’re up against. Wear protective equipment and use safe, environmentally friendly, non-toxic methods first. Keep in mind many insects return to the nest at night. This is usually the best time to deal with them.
- Think ahead through problems that could arise and try to anticipate them.
- Most importantly, BE SAFE. Make sure no children are around and have a back up plan should the unexpected arise.
Art bombing the streets
How can one really ease the movement of an outsider in a new terrain or coax entry where all other spatial signs are discouraging for a person unfamiliar with the place. As an architect I understand the principles of urban landscapes and human behavior, while as an artist and designer I want to address the issue in a way that synthesizes the different disciplines. An important component of way finding was the insertion of “attractors” which would be the points of generating interest in an otherwise unwelcoming space, landmark at important turnings and an artistic way of introducing infrastructural support.
It is basic human psychology that we can overlook negatives of our environment, if not associate a positive connotation with a space, if there is a presence of an art intervention in it. It is this very idea that inspires the creation of some of the most beautiful street art / urban installation in some of the most damaged public spaces.
My goal was to install these attractors at strategic points in the village to highlight a range of issues from the reclamation of a space, the cleaning up of another, to bringing light to some of the darkest streets. Like I’ve mentioned earlier, the garbage issue of the community has been a big problem and I’m finding the need to address it in every aspect of my project. It is integral to most of the problems of the community from their own infrastructure to the prejudices harbored by outsiders.
For the past 4 weeks, I had been holding workshops with the kids at making installations from waste to highlight a particular issue that they wish to address in their community. Some of the topics that came up and led to three-dimensional explorations where the concerns regarding dark and narrow streets or stairwells, the water shortage in the area and its wastage, and the excessive littering and spitting of betel-nut juice in the streets. The subsequent urban installations that came up were the students’ interpretations of making others aware of these concerns in the streetscape.
Our project was not meant to be a cleanliness drive for the community. Though we tried to tackle the issue to the best of our ability with the limited resources and time, we wanted to address the larger issue of the mobility through the streets. Therefore, our interventions which include cleaning of certain spaces are tied with the insertion of our public murals/installation in those spaces to highlight our role in reclaiming that space instead of the unusual attention to their duty on the part of the municipal cleaners.
Having established certain way-finding clues to guide people’s movement through the village, we now set about targeting spaces which are either important visual locations in the form of T-junctions & crossings, or those which are particularly unfavorable in passing through by either being too dark, narrow or trash filled. We started to art bomb these spaces. Our interventions are of 4 types – painted murals for striking visual impact, murals incorporating tactile and temporal elements, adding a textural or sound quality to them, to be experienced by touch for narrow streets where people’s instinct is to run their hands along the walls as they move along. Additionally, we are installing installations that incorporate light features for particularly dark spaces, and installations from reclaimed trash for spaces with a lack of adequate surface area to paint on.
We have been joined by a group of very enthusiastic volunteers from the neighboring Delhi University college – Lady Sri Ram College for Women in this street-art phase of the project, whose creative inputs and mentorship is great for the kids, only exposed to my thoughts and ideas all this while. These volunteers also form an important group of outsiders uncomfortable with entering and engaging with the Zamrudpur community, suffering from many of the prejudices I am hoping to fight. Having a small group actively work with us is a great way to start breaking this barrier, since they go back and talk to their friends about Adhyayan and the community, thus generating an interest among others.
This phase is also an exercise in taking ownership of spaces in the urban streetscape. By marking places that we are cleaning up, with art, the hope is to deter their re-degradation into unfavorable trash dumping sites. This has helped support our arguments and meetings with the government and municipal officials that we are trying to meet weekly, and maintain pressure on to become more active in their dealing with such urban villages.
– Zoya
A weekend of festivities
This weekend saw two big celebrations in India, especially Delhi. Friday marked the 67th independence day of the Republic of India. Politically, it’s a somber event, lacking the fun and festivities one associates with 4th of July in the US. Our equivalent of a day filled with parades and festivities is on 26th of January, the marking of the establishment of India as a sovereign republic in 1950. But culturally, this doesn’t stop people from celebrating! Over time, kite flying has become associated with the holiday and in the days leading up to it, one can see skies across northern India smattered with a colorful array of fluttering and flying paper.
a good day’s haul for these tiny kite runners
Two days later, the Hindu calendar celebrated Krishna Janmashtami, the birth of Lord Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu the preserver and one of the Hindu Trinity of the divine. The festival has cultural as well as religious connotations as Krishna was a young, playful god, whose mischiefs and shortcomings make him one of the most accessible deities removed from the revered pedestal of awe that many others are placed on. The festival’s celebrations include musical enactments of the life of Krishna and recreating his famous mischievous antics of youth.
These two days are very big on Adhyayan’s calendar as the kids hold a performance filled celebration. Shows are put up every year, completely choreographed by the students themselves for the neighborhood and guests from outside. When I was conceiving my own project with Adhyayan, I had wanted to hold a pop-up performance in the community, which could act as an attractor for our ongoing project and be an experiment to test our way-finding interventions in the streetscape of the community. The overlapping of these festivals was a great coincidence and opportunity.
Independence day celebration
patriotic kites
matki phhod
krishna-leela play
The week leading up to this long weekend of holiday and fun had the kids get quite caught up with the kite flying and the preparations for the plays and musicals performances and we slowed down our work on the project for a few days. My first week of mapping exercises with the students had produced some incredible graphic directions to their own homes. It was their first introduction to a mapping exercise, where by concentration only on the streetscape most pertinent to reaching their own homes they were learning lessons in identifying landmarks, both visual and sensorial, and understanding choice of movements when faced with multiples routes. They were also most importantly, identifying physical spaces that they realized would be uncomfortable for an outsider to navigate. In the process, they had created some beautiful drawing and maps of the village streets.
I had been trying to find a way to display these creations as well as make them accessible to more people outside the community to generate awareness. I decided to use this time to create cards out of these maps, something small and cheap enough to be mass produced, could be used as a stationary by Adhyayan in sending out invites/ notes for their events and which could generate an interest in the streetscape and neighborhood of Zamrudpur. This was an attempt at creating awareness flyers for the project, having a use as well. Additionally, the NGO tries to sustain itself without donations as much as it can, where most of their revenue comes from having created a small business of candle making, art and curios made by the kids themselves during various workshops, which they sell during the annual Diwali time festivities around the city. These cards also make an excellent stationary item for sale, which could add to their self-funding.
Cards of the children’s direction maps to their homes
ongoing work on the community map of Zamrudpur
Signing Off
About two weeks ago, I presented Massport’s Resiliency Website during the CEO’s Senior Staff Meeting. We got positive feedback and the website is now slated to go live in early September. The launch of the website will also be accompanied by a press release from Massport. Although I wasn’t able to see the website go live during my internship (yesterday was my last day of work), I’m excited that the project has progressed this far.
We also held our second Resiliency Speaker Series event yesterday. We welcomed Gina Ford, Principle of Sasaki’s Urban Studio; and Tom Ballestero, Director of the University of New Hampshire Stormwater Center. Gina discussed Sasaki’s Sea Change: Boston project, and Tom talked about community engagement in East Boston and made flood barrier recommendations for Massport facilities. We had a great turnout, with about 50 attendees, and a very productive Q&A session at the end of the event.
The Resiliency Program’s Speaker Series event on August 18th.
Thanks to the work I’ve been able to do this summer as a Maharam STEAM Fellow, I’ve received an invitation to attend an international symposium on resilience. The event is hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in partnership with the Center for Resilience Studies at Northeastern University. I’m thrilled to be included as part of the conference, during which I’ve been asked to document and synthesize my observations. These notes may be included in the event’s final report.
I’m sorry to see this internship end, but I hope that I’ve completed one out of many future work experiences in the resilience field. I’m very grateful to RISD and to Maharam for facilitiating this unique internship experience and I intend to continue putting the lessons that I’ve learned to work.
–Adria
Buzzing about my first demonstration-Blake Hiltunen
As I continue work on the design and construction of the mobile hive, it is necessary to regularly inspect the colony. During these inspections, I gauge the overall health of the colony by checking the bees for potential Verroa mites (tiny blood suckers that can destroy colonies and have b
een linked with the decline in bee populations), by locating the queen to be sure she is still alive and well, and to inspect each frame to see if they have built any new queen cells. New queen cells are a sign of a potentially sickly or dead queen and can also signal the potential of a colony getting ready to swarm.
This week was the first time I have opened the hive to give a demonstration to an audience. With children ages 2, 3 and 11, and adults asking question after question, I realized it will be much easier to discuss the intricacies of the colony with the observation hive rather than during a hive inspection. Beekeeping is a gentle practice. It is a ritual (the use of the smoker for instance) and a process that requires focused attention and a tuned intuition. When one is inspecting the hive, disrupting the bees’ work, it is important to be calm. With an audience this practice can quickly go from quiet routine to distracted management. Luckily, though the bees were more agitated than normal, their docile demeanor wasn’t compromised and they behaved elegantly with the spectators.
During the inspection I noticed cells being built on the bottom of a few frames as well as one abnormally large (potential queen) cell in the middle of a frame. I didn’t think much of it as the cells didn’t seem to be the typical peanut shaped queen cells. Today, however, I noticed increased activity throughout the day. Around 4 pm there was a large crowd of bees, more than I had seen at the hive before, flying in and out and seeming to be getting ready to swarm. I called Master Beekeeper Erin Forbes who told me that though they could be getting ready to swarm it was unlikely as it was too late in the day. Bees typically swarm between 9 am and 3 pm. She mentioned though that the bees could be practicing for a potential swarm the following day. What I needed to do was open the hive, find the queen, and remove any cells that could be holding new queens.
LINK TO VIDEO: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkAoF6vreO8&feature=youtu.be
After using the smoker, opening up the hive, locating the queen, and removing the potential new queens, I put the hive back together and they seemed to calm down. I’ll open the hive again in a few days to see how they’ve recovered.
Activating a space and a community
As I continue my explorations in navigating the streetscapes of Zamrudpur, I can’t escape the garbage problem of the community. While there seems to be a slight improvement in the municipal corporation’s role with our last week’s meeting and the realization of the community towards its power of proactive engagement with the government, and the slight initiative by food venders and shopkeepers to provide dustbins after our weekly community meetings, there is still a major gap in the way the households dispose of their personal waste.
In my master’s thesis, I had explored the potential of urban farming in another urban village of the city involving the strategic reclamation of parts of the Delhi green zone. Though at a larger, more practical scale, I was already warming to the idea of its potential in Zamrudpur. Despite Delhi having a number of optimum conditions for urban farming like the presence of a good soil, adequate sunlight and excess of flat surfaces in the form of waste plots / flat rooftops, not many people are engaging in it.
Along with all the navigation and attractor strategies in the village, I felt that urban cultivation could be the vital ‘activator’ for the community. Moreover Adhyayan with its students could be the perfect demonstrational and teaching set up to empower the rest of the community to accept its practice. Most households in the village, though live in tiny one-two room apartments, have access of the large roofs of their buildings that are currently used as spillover spaces. Moreover, the presence of a few families still engaging in dairy production provides the community with free excess manure. In short, they have the perfect set up to start growing their own fresh food, a lot, of which they can’t afford to buy too often from the market.
Additionally, some of my earliest exercises in the village with the children regarding mapping of spaces had brought out the jarring absence of a recreational public space within the community. While there was one small fenced green area, it was being used as an open dump by the surrounding buildings and the residents were accessing the neighboring colony’s municipal park outside the community for recreation. One couldn’t fathom why the community wasn’t actively claiming the park. It wasn’t just about cleaning up the space, there needed to be a conscious programming of the space to prevent its degradation into a dumpsite again. I wondered if a community garden could be that activity.
I came to Adhyayan with the basic idea for this project but once on site and with better understanding of all concerned elements, these 8 weeks have seen a lot of trials, errors and rerouting of strategies. The times when I’m not at Adhyayan I’ve been contacting my ex-professors of architecture, colleagues and friends, discussing the project with them and getting valuable feedback and suggestions. Ravi Gulati is the founder of Manzil, an organization working to empower youth from under-privileged communities to supplement their education beyond academia. Amit, the founder of Adhyayan was in fact a student at Manzil himself many years ago and started Adhyayan wishing to pass on the lessons he learned to the children in his village. Ravi has been a wonderful mentor and guide throughout the inception and duration of this project helping me evaluate and overcome many of the hurdles I faced.
On my mention of my interest of introducing urban farming in the community as another strategy of making them take ownership of their spaces and become an example to the outside city, offering an active and valuable demonstrational attractor, he introduced me to Kapil Mandawewala, founder and CEO of Sanjeev Fresh, an organic farming consultancy service based out of Gujarat, India. One of the key projects that Kapil is engaged in involves educational workshops in urban cities on urban farming. Kapil was kind enough to offer his services to hold a workshop with the students at Adhyayan. I wanted to have these children to initiate the practice in their community and become the tools of teaching the rest of the residents.
A few weeks ago, along with our explorations in way-finding markers and street art we started the process of reclaiming the ‘mandir wala park’ (park next to the temple). I had been in contact with Kapil who was guiding us on how to set up the space and the beds in preparation. Despite being a softscape, the main concern of urban farming here is that raised beds are needed. We procured the soil from nearby construction site’s excavation pit and the manure from one of the community’s cowsheds, all for free. Kapil then came and held a daylong workshop with a few students about urban farming, its practice and benefits.
One of the most important components of the workshop was the teaching of the compost creation. We are engaging in ‘Anaerobic composting’ of own kitchen waste – composting of household organic matter in the absence of air, in small containers. This allows for households to compost and dispose of their kitchen waste within their own homes as the container sizes are very small, and cause no unpleasant smells as it’s a closed system process, working with an absence of airborne bacteria. Since this was our first attempt, we worked on only one bed to test the outcome. We planned and planted a variety of spinach, red saag, gourd and Indian radish (mooli) in our community lot, and the children took many seeds home to plant on their rooftops. Our choice for round one was governed by choosing nutritious food sources that had the smallest growing cycle so we could see their progress within my stay and amend any errors for the subsequent planting.
In the following Sunday’s community meeting, we held a presentation and mini workshop for the rest of the community, and handed out different seed packets. Truthfully, I was very pleasantly surprised at the degree of the positive response. There started an interesting discussion that many residents took part in. Actually it shouldn’t have been such a surprise, since almost all the family have rural connections and still have family and agricultural lands that they are connected to outside of Delhi but are separated from in the urban city.
village elders engaged in discussion
post meeting tea in ‘our’ park
It’s been pretty amazing to see our seeds grow so well! This week we’ve started the process of setting up a few more soil beds!
the spinach
compost bins in Amit’s house
– Zoya
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