Bakul Foundation

Happy Birthday, Mr Naveen Patnaik, the most popular leader in Odisha for generations.

Fondly remembering your visit to Bakul 10 years back after you inaugurated the Wall of Water Public Art initiative by us near the Library.

This will remain a treasure

You would be shocked to know that almost 2 million children under the age of 5 die each year from diarrheal diseases and pneumonia, the top two reasons for the death of young children around the world.

But did you know that something as simple as handwashing with soap can protect 1 out of every 3 young children who get sick with diarrhoea, and 1 out of 5 young children with respiratory infections like pneumonia.

One of our picture books for young children, PINAKI illustrated by has a story created by children in a workshop conducted by .so.deep.sha in a Govt school in a village in Angul district. It was part of a larger intervention Bakul was doing in partnership with to promote handwashing among children.

It’s a story of a boy, Pinaki, who does not care and who never washes his hands before eating. You have to read the story to figure out what happens in this funny story, but we will drop a hint.

The Story of Pinaki is inspired by Pinocchio.

BAKUL Foundation and CYSD convened a meeting for Library Movement in Odisha yesterday with the participation of ardent advocates of the movement in Odisha. This included people, who have set up libraries in rural areas across Odisha from Mayurbhanj to Gajapati, from Puri to Kandhamal, and library professionals. We also had a senior officer (OSD) of the Culture Dept of Odisha,

We discussed issues relating to rural libraries, unimplemented schemes and plans of the Govt, and proposed many things to strengthen the library movement.

Daan Utsav of the Joy of Giving Week (2nd to 8th Oct) is the biggest volunteering festival of India, and can Bakul Foundation be far behind?

Bakul, which is an attempt to demonstrate the power of volunteerism and small individual contributions, is celebrating with 5 big initiatives. Each person can be a part of 1 or more of these initiatives.

1. The Day of Service on 6th Oct in which hundreds of volunteers go in groups to spread joy among children in slums and orphanages.

2. Coffee at = Books at in which the money from every cup of coffee sold at Café 16 will go to Bakul for buying books for new libraries.

3. Donate Paper: Build Libraries in which your old notebooks, newspapers, magazines, textbooks etc will go for recycling, and from that the money raised will be used for buying books for new libraries.

4. From Basti to Barbeque Nation on 8th Oct in which children from the slums will be treated to a Barbeque Feast for free for the 1st time.

5. Vastrasamman: Giving clothes to spread joy in partnership with , which will then distribute the clothes among the needy.

Happy World Tourism Day.

The BJP Government in power in Odisha had promised in their Election Manifesto to make Odisha a state with the 3rd largest tourist footfall in India. A major path for this was through development of ecotourism and homestays in villages.

We feel really proud that this was one of the inputs advocated in the Climate Manifesto co-initiated by our founder, Sujit Mahapatra and convened at Bakul Foundation. In fact, we are happy that both BJP and BJD had found “sustainable rural tourism” among the many inputs from our Climate Manifesto, which we had proposed to both parties and which they included in their respective State Party Manifestos.

Recently, on the completion of 100 days in office, the Honourable Chief Minister, Mr Mohan Majhi said that their Manifesto is like a “scripture” or holy book that they would fulfil. This gives us hope that the Government will act seriously on developing sustainable rural tourism in Odisha.

Register yourself today for the biggest festival of giving!

"Karte hain hum Meeting Meeting. Karte rahenge Meeting meeting"

We just cant stop. The Earth Again Conference organized by Sambad in partnership with Bakul and Socratus is just a week away from 2nd to 4th October. We have an array of eminent speakers and thought leaders on Climate Change in India.

Register asap at eatthagain.in

Are you celebrating also calledthe Joy of Giving Week*, the national festival of giving?

Join the biggest volunteering event in the annual Bakul calendar. Register at volunteer.bakul.org (link in bio) for the *Daan Utsav- Day of Service* organized by *BAKUL Foundation on 6th October* in which you can go individually or in groups to slums/orphanages/old age homes and spread joy through fun learning activities. You can participate in Bhubaneswar or any other city also.

We are proud to have helped , the Festival Director get (The Smile International Film Festival for Children and Youth) to Bhubaneswar. The Bhubaneswar edition of the biggest European Film Festival in India organized by smilefoundation and the EU in India, happened at D.A.V. Public School, Chandrasekharpur from 6th to 8th September.

Magdalena Filipczuk, Director, Polish Institute New Delhi, Embassy of Poland and Volodymyr Prytula, Second Secretary of the Embassy of Ukraine .emb.india participated in the Film Festival, which featured the best of cinema from Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, France and Czech Republic.

Eminent filmmaker Sabyasachi Mohapatra and celebrated actors, Sabyasachi Mishra and Archita Sahu encouraged the children to watch good cinema.

Sujit Mahapatra of Bakul Foundation, also motivated students to pursue opportunities for multicultural exposure, which we try to give at Bakul, and also asked all the students to show solidarity with students from Ukraine, who could not go to school in peace because of the war with Russia.

On September 8, 2017, we launched Bakul Books. Alarmed by the statistics that about 50% of children in Grade V cannot read and understand the Grade II textbooks, and our own experience testifying that, we decided to start publishing books that will help children pick up the skills in reading. As we were setting up libraries for children, we also realized that there was a big absence of interesting books scientifically designed to help children develop the skills and an interest in reading.

We did not have books for children in Odia for pre-schoolers earlier, books to introduce concepts such as colours, numbers, familiar things etc, and we are quite proud that we developed some really fun books that children can play with. We also created a set of Odia nursery rhymes in the form of attractive picture books because the rhymes help a child learn the letters. Since the child is familiar with the rhymes in oral tradition, he can predict the lines and it helps him in learning the letters.

Many environmentalists say that the roots of the ecological crisis lie in the change in which we related to nature. Instead of finding divinity in nature and spirit in trees, we started looking at trees from a commercial lens, as either coming in the way of commercial exploitation of space or to be cut down for better use.

That is why at Bakul Foundation, in the 15 years of the My Tree Campaign, we have been trying to bring back the cultural practices of worshipping trees and finding the spirits of our family members in trees through initiatives like the Twin Tree Campaign, My Tree Bandhan and Memorial Plantation.

We have, therefore, always celebrated Ganesh Puja as Tree Ganesh. Of course, Lord Ganesh with an elephant head, human body and mouse for vehicle represents the unity of all creation and the message that the Earth is for all creatures, humans and animals, big and small.

We are happy that people in general have appreciated the thought behind the Puja and have come down to be a part of the celebration. It was particularly heartening to see children come with their parents to see Lord Tree Ganesh. We are grateful that many of our friends and well wishers including the green superhero, Dedi Loku (Tree Man in the Kui language), Ms Usha Padhee, Principal Secretary, Housing and Urban Development Dept., and Mr Soumendra Priyadarshi, Director, Intelligence, Odisha Police joined us in our celebrations.

Once again this year, we had given a call to children from different schools to celebrate by tying a Rakhi, handmade or purchased on a tree at Home or the neighborhood that they would promise to protect.

We did it for the 1st time in 2023 and were overwhelmed by the response of hundreds of children responding with their photos. This year too hundreds responded, and we lpve the way the little ones are bonding with trees.

The Human Library or the Living Library has been an interesting idea in which readers borrow books of their choice, read and return them in good condition, after which they are borrowed by other interested readers. The difference being that the books are real human beings.

We had done it for the 1st time in 2011, when a visiting Estonian volunteer, Diana Tamm had shared the idea with us,, and had curated the 1st human library in BBSR. We had done iterations of it later.

We did it at Café 16 this Tuesday in our best version of it as part of the Bhubaneswar Food Fest organized by foodfindo in which we curated a very interesting mix of human books, and the readers loved it.

On this special Rakhi Purnima, we're not just celebrating the bond between siblings—we're nurturing a bond that will grow for a lifetime. Today marks the launch of the "TWIN TREE CAMPAIGN" at Capital Hospital, where every newborn is gifted a tree as their twin.

Imagine the joy of watching your child grow alongside their twin tree, sharing the same milestones, rooted in the same earth.

Over the next year, we are planning to plant 10,000 twin trees, creating a legacy of love, care, and connection with nature. Let’s give our children not just a future, but a future with deep roots. 🌍❤️

The My Tree Campaign, like most of the activities that Bakul Foundation is known for, has happened entirely with the energies, ideas and leadership of volunteers, and without any funding so far. Over 1000 people have been involved in various activities over the years, whether its painting baskets and packaging plants, or giving away trees for free to interested people, or promoting the gifting or plants, or joining the green superhero Dedi Loku in his outreach or plantation. And more than 100 volunteers have taken leadership of the campaign and driven it at different periods.

We felicitated 3 of those leaders, who took leadership in the crucial first 2 years, Amiya Patnaik, Sabita Patnaik and Suchi Smita Nayak. We also felicitated Mr Siba Mohanty, Resident Editor, The New Indian Express, who has helped amplify the ideas of the My Tree Campaign in the media from the beginning in 2009.

We had the honour of the Deputy Chief Minister, Ms Pravati Parida( ), the Agriculture Secretary, Dr. Arabinda Padhee ( )and the green superhero, Dedi Loku ( ) (Tree Man in the Kui language) to felicitate our heroes.

We celebrated the 15 years of 's , and it could not have been better.

The campaign, which promotes a personal relationship with trees and cultural practices around trees, has been very impactful and has changed the discourse in these 15 years from planting to parenting of plants. Gifting of plants, which was an alien idea in 2009, has become quite popular and established now thanks to our consistent efforts. Other cultural practices such as gifting of plants, Vriksha Bandhan or worship of trees as Tree Ganesh.

We were joined by the Honourable Deputy CM, Pravati Parida ( ), who said that she was pleasantly surprised to enter a different unexpected world when she entered Bakul and found the methods and ideas of the My Tree Campaign very innovative. The Principal Secretary, Agriculture, Dr. Arabinda Padhee( ), declared himself a lifelong volunteer of the .

The highpoint of the celebrations was the RETURN OF DEDI LOKU( ), our green superhero. Dedi Loku (meaning Tree Man in the Kui language) said that everyone there was a superhero and he was not alone, and everyone just had to build bonds with trees, and he would ensure that we live well.