Last Saturday, November 19^th 2016, we conveyed a very nice session on “Environment and culture” in Milagres College, Udupi, for students of Master in Social Work.

The reason for this title is to raise awareness among students on how culture can deeply influence environment-related issues and protection through citizens’ behaviors and political regulation. A country which is environmentally aware, will have inhabitants willing to protect the environment and politicians eager to create laws in this regard.

After a warmly hearted welcome by students, staff members and Principal Mr. G. Pinto, we started our session on Environment dealing with the topic of pollution- types, causes and ways to prevent it. Afterwards, we went into the topic of culture in which our volunteers explained about their country (Germany), their culture and lifestyle. After some general questions, we divided the main group in smaller ones to have a more fruitful discussion and exchange of ideas about culture.

In this dynamic, there were 6 groups and the participants were given main topics such as Education, Family & Love and Free time to talk about. There were sub-topics/ questions as well to ease and guide the interaction, such as ‘what does teacher mean to you?’ or ‘what the difference in the curfew time between cultures and genders and what is the reason behind for this?’. After discussion, groups shared their experience within the main group.

We consider this session to be very successful given the engagement and high interest shown by the students all over the 3 hours we spent together. We hope it was an eye-opening experience for all of them too!

 We are looking forwards to having more sessions like this!