About
What is Nature Vidya?
Nature Vidya is a dedicated Hindi-English bi-lingual portal for environment and sustainability education for teachers and educators in the western Himalayan region. It was developed by Nature Science Initiative(NSI).
Nature Vidya provides teachers simple lesson plans to engage children outdoors. Nature Vidya is organized into different courses that schools can enroll for, based on age-groups and learning levels. Nature Vidya also offers schools and teachers support for program implementation, including teacher training and implementation packages.
The Nature Vidya portal also works as a repository for Environment Education resources such as short films, posters, brochures concerning Himalayan flora and fauna, sustainability, climate action and biodiversity conservation. The Nature Vidya portal was initially funded by a grant from Janki Devi Bajaj Gram Vikas Sanstha, and has received further support from Wipro Foundation and ENVIS (MoEFCC).
Why Nature Vidya?
Nature Vidya provides contextualized environment education activities for Himalayan and Terai regions currently. These activities cover fundamental concepts in Ecology, Biodiversity, Waste Management and Sustainability leading to building strong environmental stewardship and tools for children to practically address various environmental issues, including climate action.
Nature Vidya is anchored in observation-driven learning. The portal provides teachers very simple tools to get children to learn by making their own observations. This aligns with the NEP 2020’s objectives to anchor education within the immediate environment using activities.
Nature education lays the foundation towards developing independent and confident thinkers, with strong problem solving abilities. It also prepares students for the future, giving them very practical skills to address their environmental problems. Outdoor nature-based education is critical to enable future generations to address changing climatic scenarios.
How does Nature Vidya work?
Once schools register, they can access content available under various Nature Vidya courses. Schools can request NSI for teacher training and implement Nature Vidya courses by themselves. Teachers will be trained and provided with support and guidance by the NSI team throughout the academic year. Alternatively, schools can also request NSI to provide periodic teaching inputs throughout the academic year by opting for the Enhanced Nature Vidya Package. NSI’s has a small highly experienced nature educators, who can be booked in advance if the school opts for the Enhanced Package. The pricing of the Enhanced Package will depend on the number of sessions and travel costs involved in the implementation. We also provide the free Support Package to government schools falling within our program areas with funding support from various agencies. The Support Package involves full support for teacher training and activity implementation across an academic year.
Our Vision
We believe in connecting children with their immediate natural surroundings.
Kids develop a sense of wonder and appreciation for nature through observation and immersion.
Immerse.Observe.Learn
Our Mission
Our idea is to make nature education more localised, engaging and observation-based. We aim to achieve this by creating easily accessible nature education resources for educators.
Our Objectives
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To strengthen the network of nature educators.
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To enable students to learn from their own observations of nature
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To connect students with natural life around them, in their own neighbourhoods
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To help students move towards a nature-centred value system.