"Seeing the Forest and the Trees"
The Nepal Australia Community Forestry Project
Student activities
1a) Brainstorm a list of the many ways in which forests assist you in your daily life.
b) Locate Nepal in an atlas or on a class wall map. Using information from the atlas and any prior understanding, brainstorm a list of the ways in which you believe
forests might help Nepali people in their daily lives.
c) Read the introduction to the case study. Which uses of forests in Nepal did you not think of, and why?
d) In what ways are the lists for your life, and life in Nepal, the same and different?
2 What do you think the following forest products are used for? - herbs, timber, fuelwood, charcoal. (There is more than one use for each)
3 Take turns in asking a partner 'what if'? questions about forest products. For example, 'what if there was no more fuelwood?' 'What if there was no more clean water?'
4 Imagine you are a Nepali woman. In what ways might the community forestry project have been particularly helpful to you and your family? For example, if you no longer need to walk six hours a day to obtain water for your family, what else could you do with the time?
5 Imagine you are an elder in a village community who has witnessed forestry programs in the area since the 1960s. Explain to a visitor from a distant village why the community forestry project of the 1980-90s has been more successful than the original program.
6 a) Look again at all the services and activities which have resulted from the community forestry project. If you were a decision-maker in a Forest User Group,
choose the three which you think could most help your community.
b) Form groups of four members. Imagine you all belong to a Forest User Group and explain your three choices to each other.
c) Imagine you must now as a group decide on the main three services or activities for funding. Report your discussions to the class.
d) As a class, discuss:
i) the sorts of things your group took into account in making their decisions
ii) how easy or difficult it was for group members to agree on which projects to fund
7 Design and display posters informing your school or local community of the need to carefully manage forests in Australia and overseas.
8 Plant and care for one or more trees as a class, perhaps in the school grounds, in a local park or as a country roadside plantation. Place a sign stating the year of planting and naming your class. Record changes in height and appearance. Continue to care for the area if possible, watch changes over the years and think about what your action has achieved.
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