Stop Plastic ! - Goa (India)

ar donors, with the success of our crowdfunding 1 year ago for our project in India (thanks to you) we decided to give it a try for another of our projects: the green turtle conservation project against poaching in the Comoros.

This year, with the help of our SCS volunteers, we managed to find many interesting rewards for our donors such as masks with embroidered turtle, ocean themed soaps, classes of mermaid-swimming and many more. If you are interested to help us, there are 5 days left to participate and join this project here with We Make It

https://wemakeit.com/projects/save-the-turtles

THANK YOU

Although it has been complicated to start the project this year with the pandemic going on, I am happy to share some positive news of our projects with you, our dear donors:

Students for Seas (education on the marine environment to kids): with a part of the funds raised, we have been able to hire a specialised educator and an illustrator who have been working from home to design the first book of a series of 5 books focusing on marine conservation. The aim of these illustrated books is to teach the kids about the marine environment in a fun way. They have been custom-made for children belonging to local coastal communities on the west coast of India, so that these kids can easily identify themselves to the characters of the books and the issues related to the marine environment in their surroundings. Also this project enabled to give employment to 2 more people during these hard times, which is great! The final version should be ready in January. This will be a great asset for our reaching awareness programme with kids. Concerning the tidal walks and the beach cleanings, we are hoping to be able to resume them early next year.

Ocean Friendly Tourism: As you probably know, the tourism industry has been hit very hard by the pandemic, however, national tourism has resumed and more and more people are visiting the Goan beaches. Thus recently Terra Conscious has been able to resume dolphin watching trips and train a few more operators on sustainable tourism practices. Also, booklets on eco-friendly practices for tourism have been drafted and will be soon distributed in various places across Goa. This is a first step to connect hotels with eco-friendly operators and send their clients to these operators that have been trained in sustainable practices. Oh and another great thing: SCS and Terra Consicous are now partnering with the renown organisation called World Cetacean Alliance, number one when it comes to sustainable dolphin/whale watching worldwide. From now on we are working together to reduce the impacts of unsustainable marine tourism on the marine environment by training boat operators. We are hoping to start this part of the project next year too, and we are currently working on raising more funds to extend this part of the project in other parts of India.

Ocean Watch (response to marine wildlife strandings): We have not been able to resume this year our workshops on wildlife strandings due to pandemic-related difficulties, so we will postpone the activities of this project for next year. However the trained lifeguards continue to rescue stranded animals, and they keep us updated on their work. We are planning to train more lifeguards once the situation improves.

I am hoping that I will be able to fly to Goa early 2021 to assist Terra Conscious in the fieldwork. For now visas are still not been given to small NGOs, but we hope the situation will change very soon!

Thank you again for your donations, without you all these steps would have been unachievable. We are hoping for a great 2021 to continue this great conservation work.

The SCS and Terra Conscious teams wish you a merry Christmas and let’s hope for the best for 2021!

ar donors,

Here is some news of the project after many delays caused by the Covid19 situation, particularly in India, a country very much affected by this upheaval.

First of all, with our partner Terra Conscious, we have chosen to name the project as a whole « Indian Coasts Conservation Programme « and this programme is divided into 3 projects :

1) «Students for Seas» - a marine environmental education system for children

2) «Ocean Friendly Hospitality» - creating a network of committed and aware coastal tourism partners who practice and support responsible tourism.

3) «Ocean Watch» - a network to monitor Goa’s coastline and assist stranded or injured marine animals. This project has been in existence since 2017 and since 2020 the Swiss Cetacean Society has joined forces with the partners in this project to help in its expansion.

Since mid-June our partners in Goa have been carrying out field surveys in schools and tourism stakeholders in order to better adjust the project to the current situation. As the schools are still closed, and the hotels/restaurants are mostly closed as well, we have decided to postpone the field part of the «Students for Seas» and «Ocean Friendly Hospitality» projects until next year. However, we have been working since July on the development and improvement of our pedagogical tools to be better prepared as soon as the field part can take place.

As far as the Ocean Watch project is concerned, the field part can continue to take place this year with the coastguards and lifeguards who deal with the management of marine fauna strandings in Goa. New workshops will be held to train new staff this year. This month, a dolphin stranded on Palolem beach could be rescued thanks to the training given since 2017 to these coastguards.

We will keep you informed of the evolution of these 3 projects soon, for more information: https://en.swisscetaceansociety.org/sensibilisation-inde

Thank you for making these projects possible. Swiss Cetacean Society - SCS

Hello

I hope you’re doing well despite this situation. Here’s some news about the project concerning Covid19.

For the moment we are waiting to see how the situation in Goa develops in the coming weeks/months to decide whether we keep the August 1st date to start the project, or whether we wait a little longer as we depend on the opening of schools, businesses, and tourism to be able to launch the awareness campaign.

Some of you have not received certain rewards, such as the bamboo straws. For logistical complications due to the virus, they will be delivered to you as soon as the confinement period ends, sorry for the delay.

As you can imagine, the confinement period can be very difficult for unprivileged people in India. Thus I decided to organize a small crowdfunding to help these people but also animals to get food. Feel free to have a look, the project is called «Dogs need help too #covid19» and can be found on We Make It.

Don’t hesitate to contact me by email if you have any questions (iv_animal@hotmail.com).

I wish you all a good day

Ivan

Nous avons réussi ! Merci énormément à tous nos contributeurs! Ivan de la Swiss Cetacean Society et notre équipe à Goa de Terra Conscious vous remercient pour tous vos dons qui nous permettent de lancer ce projet cette année. Nous préparons dès Février les présentations et le matériel didactique pour la sensibilisation dans notre bureau à Lausanne, et débuterons les 6 mois de campagne dès cet été.

Nous vous contacterons prochainement et individuellement pour l’organisation et l’envoi des contreparties. Merci à tous !

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We made it! Many thanks to all our contributors! Ivan from the Swiss Cetacean Society and our team in Goa from Terra Conscious are thankful for all your donations which allow us to launch this project this year. We are preparing the presentations and educational material for the awareness campaign in our office in Lausanne in February and will start the 6-month awareness campaign in Goa this summer.

We will contact you soon and individually for the organization and the sending of the rewards. Thanks to all of you!

Nous y sommes presque! Plus que 24 heures pour valider définitivement ce projet et pouvoir le lancer cette année. Merci énormément pour votre soutien. Certains de vos amis voulaient aussi contribuer mais ont oublié? C’est le moment ou jamais de le leur rappeler ;)

We’re almost there! Only 24 hours left to definitively validate this project and start it this year. Thank you very much for your support. Some of your friends also wanted to contribute but forgot? This is the time to remind them ;)

Merci énormément à nos 123 contributeurs, grâce à vous nous avons atteint 65 % ! Cependant pour que le projet puisse se réaliser, il nous reste plus que 6 jours pour atteindre les 100%. Si vous connaissez 1 ou 2 personnes sensibles à ce genre de projet, vous pouvez leur envoyer le lien de ce crowdfunding. Cela nous aiderait énormément, un grand merci !

Many thanks to our 123 contributors, thanks to you we have reached 65%! However, for the project to succeed, we only have 6 days left to reach 100%. If you know 1 or 2 people who are interested in this kind of project, you can send them the link to this crowdfunding. It would help us a lot, thank you very much!

Merci aux 100 contributeurs qui soutiennent le projet ! Plus que 13 jours pour atteindre l’objectif. Avez-vous dans votre entourage 2-3 personnes qui seraient interessées à contribuer également? N’hésitez pas à leur envoyer le lien du projet cette semaine :)

C’est officiel, nous avons atteint un tiers de l’objectif en 2 semaines! merci à tous! Encore 4 semaines pour atteindre les 2 tiers restants. N’hésitez pas à parler du projet à vos proches durant les fêtes, peut-être voudront-ils faire un petit cadeau pour l’environnement?

It’s official, we have reached one third of the goal in 2 weeks! Thank you all! Another 4 weeks to reach the remaining 2 thirds. Don’t hesitate to tell your friends and family about the project during the Christmas holidays, maybe they’ll want to make a little gift for the environment?

Namaste,

Merci à tous nos donateurs, en 3 jours nous avons déjà atteint 10% du budget !

N’hésitez pas à partager ce lien, envoyer un whatsapp/email à vos proches pour parler du projet, et nous serons certains de réussir à financer le projet pour qu’il puisse débuter l’année prochaine.

धन्यवाद merci