Madiwala Lake Stakeholders Meet – 16th February 2019
One of the key focus areas under Bosch India’s CSR initiatives is the conservation of our environment. As part of their CSR programme, Bosch has entered into an agreement with FSL-India and Karnataka Forest Department (KFD) to work on the development of Madiwala Lake and the facilities surrounding it. The Madiwala Lake project aims to involve the community and its neighbourhood, thereby transforming Madiwala Bio- Diversity Park into a replicable model.
FSL-India is the implementing partner for the Madiwala Lake project, and is responsible for achieving the “Sustainability factor” by forming a committee of stakeholders, who will take ownership for maintaining and developing the Madiwala Lake. FSL-India facilitated a stakeholders meeting on 16th February 2019, at Madiwala Lake. The objective behind this activity was to make it a participatory process, allowing all stakeholders to share their ideas for the development of Madiwala Park.
24 participants were present for the meeting, i.e. Mrs Shilpa Deodhar, Mr Jacob Varkey, Mr Shenoy and Mr Ashoka along with 10 CSR volunteers from Bosch India, Mr Harshavardhan, Deputy Range Forest Officer from KFD, Mr Vidyashankar, Mr Madappa, Mr Suresh and Mrs Gayathri Sen from the Madiwala Tank Lake Foundation (MTLF) and Mr Rakesh Soans, Mr Rohan D’Souza, Ms Ashwini G and Mrs Madhumathi from FSL-India.
After some icebreakers and energisers, a brief introduction of the Madiwala Lake project was given by FSL-India. The two key points emphasised were:
- FSL India’s efforts to encourage Social Leadership and Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) among the local community and stakeholders for development of the park
- Bosch would like to make this project a self-sustaining model that can be replicated at other parks.
Mr. Harshavardhan, from KFD spoke briefly about the history of the park and how it was cumbersome to develop the park on its own, as the processes and procedures are too many and too complex. KFD works closely with MTLF in maintaining and developing the park. Water Hyacinth (an aquatic plant) cleaning takes up the majority of the funds. He said that the CSR activities taken up by Bosch would go a long way in developing the lake and the park. He also promised that the KFD would ensure that the development undertaken by Bosch is sustained.
Mr. Vidyashankar spoke about the efforts put in by the MTLF from the past 15 years, and about the difficulties faced in procuring funds from the government. So, they have not been able to complete many of the projects taken up and maintenance of existing facilities is also quite challenging.
They have been running the park, with funds they get from the MLA and MP funds, selling of the compost manufactured at the composting facility inside the park, and through collection of entry fees. He said the MTLF had lots of plans for the development of the lake and the park, and hoped Bosch would help to bring them to fruition.
Mrs. Gayathri Sen, who is also the President of the BTM Layout Welfare Association, spoke about the ‘Kere Habba’ being organised at the park for the past 3 years, and the enthusiastic participation of schools, children and the community, in general. She spoke about WWF, an NGO that has associated itself with the ‘Kere Habba’ and how it really helped them organise the festival on a grander scale, and with much more ease. She too, is looking forward to working with Bosch and FSL-India.
Mrs. Shilpa Deodhar then spoke about the CSR program and Bosch’s mission – sustainability, transparency and accountability. She emphasised the fact that the success of CSR programs are not as dependent on money as much as they are on Human Capital. It was therefore crucial that all the stakeholders come together for the success of this project. The feeling of ‘Namma Kere’ is the way to move forward.
After a quick tour of the park, led by the MTLF and the KFD and a short tea break, Mr. Rakesh Soans, presented the future plan of action that involves 4 proposed stages:
Stage 1: Identification of the needs, stakeholders and beneficiaries through a survey, and formation of a core committee with representation from all the stakeholders
Stage 2: Project development, plan preparation and project finalisation
Stage 3: Project implementation
Stage 4: Project monitoring
The participants were then divided into 4 teams and asked to present their vision of an ideal park, along with a list of the beneficiaries and stakeholders of the park. All the teams gave their creative best to this process and came up with their ideas of what the park should look like at the end of the project. The participants were asked to dream big, and not worry about the possibility in implementing their ideas. Once they had discussed and drawn the same on chart paper, each of the teams presented their ideal park. With each of the participants giving their ideas, at the end of the activity, a comprehensive idea of an ‘ideal park’ taking into account all their individual thoughts, was generated. FSL-India looks forward to the creation of this prototype of an ‘ideal park’ and hope it will be an inspiration to many.
A similar approach to collect ideas from visitors of the park, school children, neighboring communities is planned. This will be done through a survey. Most of the volunteers said they were willing to be part of the survey, during weekends and a few of them volunteered to be part of the core committee. The meeting ended in high spirits, with a definite plan in place, to move on to the next stage.