About Education & Training
In the area of MCT’s reach, we have focused on helping students study further by financially helping them. The importance of alternate livelihoods is critical. In this landscape, where water is scarce and the land falls in a rain shadow area, it is therefore prone to droughts, where elephants, and other ungulates roam, farming is extremely difficult. In a time where human populations are soaring and there is a constant human/wildlife fight for land use, alternate livelihoods is critical. MCT’s philosophy is that whatever existing lands are there abutting tiger reserves should be shared with wildlife. To achieve this, local people need to have an alternate earning source for their living so conflict is controlled and decreased.
MCT has started “Belaku Kendra” which focuses on giving alternate livelihood training to women. We concentrate on crochet and make interesting crafts which are on sale. We pay the women
a daily stipend to train until the time comes when they can work from home and supply items. All raw materials are procured by MCT so this burden of sourcing materials does not fall on the women. We focus on the upliftment of women as we believe that they have a stronger impact in the village and positive changes will occur due to their participation in wildlife conservation.
What People
Say About Us
The Mariamma Charitable Trust has done really commendable work in protecting tigers and leopards from retaliatory killing, whilst also addressing the economic losses that the rural people face when their cattle are killed by large carnivores.
The Trust’s work in providing free health care and support for education also greatly helps to improve the lives of the poorest of the poor in the local communities
am a veterinarian with the Wildlife Trust of India and we work in close collaboration with the Forest Department of Karnataka. I first met Sunita when I was 14 years old.
She is totally dedicated to wildlife and is passionate about her work. My role is to attend to injured and dying animals and to build bridges between the local people who suffer losses and the Forest Department. Things have been so much easier with Sunita’s input. I feel she has made a great deal of change in the perceptions of the local people and has contributed greatly towards reducing human-animal conflict in this belt.
This area in the tiger reserve is a mosaic of communities, agricultural land and forests. Traditionally the villagers have tolerated the wildlife but as the human wildlife conflict has intensified, antagonism is fast replacing this tolerance.
Sunita and the Mariamma Charitable Trust are working hard to maintain the traditional tolerance through a multi-pronged approach that focuses on enhancing healthcare and compensating farmers who lose live-stock to large carnivores from the park. These steps are important precursors to achieving the larger goal – the co-existence of human communities and wildlife with both benefiting from the other; humans from the economic value that living close to wildlife can bring through tourism and for wildlife, the maintenance of their habitat, giving them optimal access to food and water. The local communities are confident in the Trust and the dynamic and committed team – your financial support will only further the cause of conservation in this outstanding environment.
