MES UNAI ASPIRE CHAPTER

🌍 From the campus to the cardamom hills!
Swipe left to see how 30 passionate youth volunteers are gearing up for grassroots climate action in Idukki. 👉

This past weekend, the Youth Climate Action Group (YCAG) hosted an intensive Green Skilling Workshop on Participatory Research & Field Data Collection at MES College Nedumkandam. This workshop is part of the "Carbon Credits for Cardamom" project (led by Akmal Ali, NYCC Climate Champion - Kerala) under @nyccindia with the support of @yuwaahindia . We bridged the gap between academic theory and on-the-ground reality, learning how a systematic research process can drive evidence-based climate solutions.

Our volunteers learned to drop the rigid "surveyor" mindset and become empathetic facilitators. We mastered hands-on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques—including Seasonal Calendars, Institutional Mapping, and the "Five Whys" method. Equipped with structured Economic and Social Indicator Frameworks, our team is now trained to document everything from agricultural debt traps and crop yield losses to occupational heat stress and community vulnerability.

Next stop? The plantations! We will work directly with smallholder farmers to translate their lived experiences into an actionable, data-driven policy brief.