Science & Outdoors
Students with the GEM ambassador program spent their summer volunteering in India.
A summer in India with GEM
The Pointer
bhaig870@uwsp.edu
If you think this past summer was hot, you should probably talk to College of Natural Resources students Andrew VanNatta and Scott Reilly, who spent their summer in India as Global Environmental Managment student ambassadors in 100 plus degree heat most of the summer. The two students were on hand Tuesday, Nov. 11 to give a presentation of their experience this summer as student ambassadors in India.VanNatta and Reilly spent 12 weeks working with the Indian non-governmental organization Foundation for Ecological Security. They helped develop a plan for resource assessment and a resource management plan in a watershed near Bhilwara Rajasthan, India. The students traveled to remote villages and learned how FES is helping communities reclaim battered landscapes and build sustainable livelihoods.
“I think a main point of GEM and future ambassadors needs to be that it’s much more about the cultural experience, trying to understand how people relate to the land, and what they’re doing as far as managing the land and trying to improve people’s lives,” said Reilly.
Much of the presentation focused on VanNatta and Reilly’s unique cultural experience. Their slideshow helped the audience visualize some of the large cultural differences in transportation, cuisine, landscape, and most of all, people.
“Being in India is about people; people were very curious about us,” said Reilly.
In one of the most densely populated countries in the world, the two CNR students were considered an anomaly, but this helped them to connect with more people and gain a greater cultural experience.
The students’ last part of the slideshow featured some of the animals they had seen during their time in India. Monkeys, llamas and elephants were daily occurrences on the streets of Bhilwara.
“You cannot cuss enough when you see an elephant walk by you on the street,” remarked Reilly.
However, their last slide was that of a rainy, late afternoon at a national park in which the two caught a glimpse of a female tiger strolling through the jungle.
The GEM student ambassador Program is a project of the GEM Education Center in the College of Natural Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. The program was developed to provide transformative learning enrichment opportunities for capable and motivated CNR students in programs and activities, primarily with GEM’s international partners.
