A large group of children and their teachers came all the way from Chennai this Friday to visit Sadhana Forest! They were extremely enthusiastic and hard working and loved being a part of the scene here.

Some children joined moving piles of branches, still left from the cyclone! Others joined in the kitchen and the vast majority came to the forest.

All the branches are now moved out of Children's Land, leaving space for other Children to come in the future and enjoy the space!

One of our forest projects is to improve one of our dams with vetiver grass, for today we will focus on making a bund to plant the grass on.

Preparing for making a bund

A heavily compacted bund starting to take shape!

Thanks to the Siragu group many of our thristy trees have been replenished and are more prepared for the dry summer!

This girl helps in the chain of transporting water from one of our mud pools to the seedlings in the forest.

Mulch (dry organic material such as leaves) spread to keep the water from evaporating, and also enriching the soil! Vishu, one of our volunteers, shows how to do this.

Thank you everyone from Siragu for joining us and help build our forest!

These children loved having their photo taken, they hurriedly huddled infront of the camera!

On the 27th  more than 250 people  participated in the 2nd birthday of the Children’s Land project! Eleven games and many performances were held during the celebration! All the volunteers of Sadhana Forest, about 100 volunteers, ran the activities.

All the children went home with a mask and a smile…

So the celebration was a great success!

The most popular activity was Face painting! By the afternoon the children’s faces were full of color!

Another activity was natural playdoh! They first draw on paper and then fill the formes with the playdoh. The children created many beautiful colors!

Tasting and Guessing - This game is a blindfolded discovery of taste and smell. The children were given different foods to guess what they were!

The speciality of the day -  Vegan muffins, rosella leaves and seeds, tapioca chips, cinnamon, star anise, citrus leaves, turmeric, and chili powder, and banana…   They loved it!!!

There where also many performances during the birthday!

There was a puppet show, capoeira (Brazilian dance), clown and magic perfomance, body percussion and more

full of colors!