Four friends decide to meet over beer to take this idea forward.There was a unanimity about doing something, but HOW, WHERE, WHEN, WHY were yet to be answered.
We had to built a common identity to which people can relate to. We had to give name to this newborn idea.
Couple of days passed by in this name searching process, till one day one of our friends Mr. Mahendra Vichare suggested, Why can't we name it ECOFOLKS.....Folks, a group of people working for conservation of ECO-logy.
A google search followed to identify the uniquness of the name... & there was nothing close, on the world wide web.
Immidately we named ourselves ECOFOLKS.
We had no idea what to do next, till one day when we had been to Kanheri we encountered a young man leading a group of school boys.....on a NATURE TRAIL.
Nature Information Centre (NIC) is a Education outreach agency of the Forest Department, was being managed by BNHS back then in 2007. Mr. Amit , the resourceful centre incharge was at the helm of affairs at NIC.
NIC was in charge of organising all activities in SGNP including Nature Trails, Film Shows etc.
We decided to take help from Amit.
Our request of attending one of the Nature Trail was gracefully granted by Amit, because till then we had never attended a trail in our lifetime.
The trail was led by an able Education officer Miss Gauri, at the end of which we all felt that we had found our first anchor for Ecofolks.
We had to built a common identity to which people can relate to. We had to give name to this newborn idea.
Couple of days passed by in this name searching process, till one day one of our friends Mr. Mahendra Vichare suggested, Why can't we name it ECOFOLKS.....Folks, a group of people working for conservation of ECO-logy.
A google search followed to identify the uniquness of the name... & there was nothing close, on the world wide web.
Immidately we named ourselves ECOFOLKS.
We had no idea what to do next, till one day when we had been to Kanheri we encountered a young man leading a group of school boys.....on a NATURE TRAIL.
Nature Information Centre (NIC) is a Education outreach agency of the Forest Department, was being managed by BNHS back then in 2007. Mr. Amit , the resourceful centre incharge was at the helm of affairs at NIC.
NIC was in charge of organising all activities in SGNP including Nature Trails, Film Shows etc.
We decided to take help from Amit.
Our request of attending one of the Nature Trail was gracefully granted by Amit, because till then we had never attended a trail in our lifetime.
The trail was led by an able Education officer Miss Gauri, at the end of which we all felt that we had found our first anchor for Ecofolks.
We could start off by conducting ' Curriculum Based Nature trails' added one off us.
'that sounds good' added another,Learning in the lap of mother Nature. We could teach Geography, EVS, Science & even History in SGNP as we had Kanheri Caves inside .
So now we had a name as well as a objective...'Curriculam based Nature Trail'
But we did not have the most important link in this chain..........CUSTOMER.
We decided to approach schools with our unique idea of 'Curriculum based Nature Trail', We studied the portion of various standards & came out with a unique product..NATLAB, a short for NATure LABoratory.
NATLAB, the Curriculum based Nature Trail was our first educational product for schools.
Till this time our total investment in Ecofolks was only our TIME & IDEAS.
Before bringing in some hard cash we felt that we should be testing waters. So it was decided to contact 5 schools in our locality with our new product NATLABS to understand the financial feasibility .
The list was drawn,& our initial investment was 100 letterheads & same number of visiting cards.
Till date those 100 cards & letterheads is what is our earliest seed investment in ECOFOLKS....
.....To be continued....
'that sounds good' added another,Learning in the lap of mother Nature. We could teach Geography, EVS, Science & even History in SGNP as we had Kanheri Caves inside .
So now we had a name as well as a objective...'Curriculam based Nature Trail'
But we did not have the most important link in this chain..........CUSTOMER.
We decided to approach schools with our unique idea of 'Curriculum based Nature Trail', We studied the portion of various standards & came out with a unique product..NATLAB, a short for NATure LABoratory.
NATLAB, the Curriculum based Nature Trail was our first educational product for schools.
Till this time our total investment in Ecofolks was only our TIME & IDEAS.
Before bringing in some hard cash we felt that we should be testing waters. So it was decided to contact 5 schools in our locality with our new product NATLABS to understand the financial feasibility .
The list was drawn,& our initial investment was 100 letterheads & same number of visiting cards.
Till date those 100 cards & letterheads is what is our earliest seed investment in ECOFOLKS....
.....To be continued....
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