Our 5th Outreach Session was a multitude of sights, smells and perceptions. At the outset, Lakshyam doesnt boast of being superficial it is bang in the middle of the Vasant Kunj slum area and it wears this tag with pride! We reached Lakshyam on another bright Sunday morning (the kids are going to start hating us for robbing their holidays!) by making our way through tiny lanes packed with street dogs picking up fights and women doing laundry. As soon as we reached, 30 odd children jumped up and in perfect synchrony cried - ?Good Morning Ma'am!?

They were clearly excited, much to our delight. After quick introductions, we spoke to them about the concept of Leadearthship, Teri and Tetra Pak and then switched to our first session on Biodiversity with a game on identifying animals in camouflage and real life stories like those of the Bishnoi Community. Our session on Water focused on issues like Water Scarcity - a reality they experienced every day as they stand in long lines for the highly irregular water tankers. We then had Snigdha Kar (our speaker) show them a movie to simplify the concept of Climate Change and use her background in Environmental Education to urge them to work for the environment.

We were extremely touched to see the immense amount of respect in their eyes for basic resources and this wasn?t surprising, given how scarce the availability was for them. But their faces didn?t show any self pity, just a quite dignity of acceptance. And that is what we didn?t like. We wanted them to stand up, use the fruits of education to make decisions for them selves, to not give up until they ensured a better life for themselves. Again (like a revelation) we found ourselves asking - here we were talking about conservation to kids for whom meeting basic necessities was a far cry, let alone having the opportunity to save!

It was difficult to paint the picture in colors that they recognized but we tried our best to tell them that change did indeed begin from them. 'Sanitation?, 'Public Hygiene?, 'Littering? and 'Open Defecation? were some things that they had loads to say about and that gave us a glimmer of hope that they will soon draw the connection to much bigger issues of Sustainability. This was our tryst with the haves and have nots!