The newly expanded team at Veditum met in-person in Namma Bengaluru this September. The weather was kind and we were at the lovely Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus for the Student Conference on Conservation Science (SCCS) – Bengaluru 2025.
We interacted & shared our work with students as well as researchers, caught up with friends & collaborators, had great food, and a whole lot of learning! We put up a stall at the Who’s Who section, hosted a workshop, attended some workshops, and the many many talks!
Who’s Who in Conservation at SCCS 2025
Paraphrased from the SCCS website:
“Who’s Who in Conservation” brings together a diverse and vibrant community of conservationists. This platform is crafted to spark meaningful conversations between attendees (largely students, and practitioners) and participating organisations.
The intention is to promote discovery of work of various conservation-driven initiatives, explore areas of shared interest, and for students to learn about volunteering, internships, and career opportunities in the field of conservation.
Veditum also had a stall as part of the “Who’s Who” platform. We showcased our work through posters, prints of our annual report, handouts, interactive activities, and published material like zines, books, etc.
We also had stickers and postcards from our work for people to take / buy / send to friends and family! Here are a few snippets:
Mine Craft – Puzzle time!
We took the idea of a jigsaw puzzle and improvised on it. Enter MineCraft!
Instead of showing people the final image (like in the case of a puzzle box), we asked them to pick up a random piece from a container, and guess where it goes on the grid. While the first few pieces were difficult to place on a blank canvas (we used numbers to place the first few), people were able to start guessing once clues emerged.
What participants didn’t realise was that they were crowdsourcing data to put together the complete picture of mining sites along some of India’s rivers. This in a way was representative of how our project India Sand Watch crowdsources data related to sand mining in India’s rivers, and then creates pathways for action!
We love it when people come together and collective action produces outcomes. This fun puzzle- like game, was designed to engage people in contributing evidence – no matter how small, that would build a bigger picture when more people contributed to the game.
River Postcards and Stickers
As usual, our love for postcards continues to grow, and we had postcards from the 6 rivers walked during the Moving Upstream project and fellowships. We also had our own postbox where people could submit their filled postcards! It was heartening to see people pick up postcards to send to their friends and families.
The Veditum team also took this opportunity to write postcards to our new office space, that has been an inviting space for some exciting conversations and collaborations!
We also had some new stickers on sale, in line with our love for rivers. These have been designed by team members and fellows of our moving upstream program! The River Paglu sticker was made by Madappa PS, and the River (Not) Linking sticker was made by Poorva Goel.
Want these for yourself? Volunteer with us or participate in our in-person events.
Workshops
We were both able to host a workshop, as well as attend some of the many lovely workshops that were hosted at SCCS 2025. Here’s a recap of our workshop and one that some of the team members attended.
Using Open Data for Better Environment Protection
Aishani and Rhea from the India Sand Watch team conducted a workshop on Using Open-Data for Better Environmental Protection on the third day of the conference. There were 11 attendees at the workshop, most of whom were students of ecology or working in the environmental space as data analysts, researchers etc.
The workshop began with an introduction to our environmental accountability work at India Sand Watch, followed by a discussion on environmental challenges and threats that could benefit from evidence building using open-data. The participants engaged in a lively conversation about open-data, and the need for data to be accessible, use-able, and interpretable in order to be truly considered ‘open’!
The discussion lead into an activity where participants were paired up and each team was assigned a district in an Indian state. With guidance from the team, participants collected evidence of sand mining activities, violations and violence in their assigned district.
In the end, each team presented their findings and insights – some of which can be seen by opening this toggle:
- Hamirpur, UP | Mining was observed via satellite imagery, preceding the identification of mining sites by the district administration via the Hamirpur DSR. News reports painted a grisly image of violent suppression of those that opposed the mining, excessive and illegal mining, and the involvement of politicians and criminal gangs in enabling illegal mining on the Ken, Yamuna and Betwa rivers in the region.
- Paschim Bardhaman, WB | News reports from the district mentioned depleting groundwater resources because of river sand mining. But the Environmental Clearance application by a prospective leaseholder for a mining site on the Ajay river, mentions 0 groundwater monitoring locations, hence no study of groundwater levels. The maps in the district’s DSR was unclear, not communicating any information.
- blurry dsr: Chattarpur, MP | News reports on sand mining from the district covered incidents of violence, and also mentions of change in river flow because of mining. Mining observation record on India Sand Watch and satellite images from the Ken showed sand mining. The District Survey Report of Chhatarpur accessed by the group had very poor legibility / readability.
- Morena, MP | Despite the declaration of the Chambal river as a Protected Area, news reports of illegal sand mining were found from the river even prior to the Madhya Pradesh government’s proposal to de-notify the sanctuary within the state!
- Panna, MP | Signs of sand mining were evident from satellite imagery along the Ken river in Panna, even before the district’s DSR was created and approved. Mining scars seemed to exceed the area allotted in the DSR, and the mining site was right beside a bridge – a clear violation of the MP Sand Mining Rules of 2019.
To wrap up the workshop, we discussed the value of open data in enabling public accountability and citizen action, and encouraged participants to use this framework (with our help, if needed!) to collect evidence for the environmental threats that they were working on or concerned about!
Games for conservation workshop
On the second day of the conference, Madappa, Rhea and Aishani from the Veditum team attended a workshop on Games for Conservation. This was hosted by Peeyush Sekhsaria, Priti Bangal, Karthik Natarajan, and Prasad Sandbhor. With the use of games in nature and conservation education gaining popularity in India, the workshop provided useful insights into game design to enhance learning and explain complex ideas like climate change or biodiversity conservation.
We got to play some fun games with other attendees, and draw insights from the experience of playing the games – which we then put to use in designing our own game based on prompts from the facilitators.
Our group designed and presented a prototype for an educational game for 10-14 year olds in Rajasthan to teach them about the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard – it’s ecology, distribution, status and threats, as well as possible interventions to protect the species.
The workshop was extremely engaging and a fun way to get some hands-on learning and feedback on interactive and fun ways to conduct outreach and awareness programs – leaving us inspired to take these learnings to design our own games about India’s amazing rivers and the daunting threats they face!
Some of the work showcased at the Who’s Who can also be found in the Activity Report 2024-2025, along with older reports, on this link – https://veditum.org/veditum-activity-reports/
We were also at SCCS 2024 – read this blog to know about our experience last year.
We also thoroughly enjoyed the many plenary sessions, from phenology to compassion in conservation to natural history. The student posters and talks, all the stalls at the Who’s Who space, and watching the documentary ‘My Otter Diary‘ by our friends Sugandhi and Rana, were all very enriching experiences too!
Well designed (and well managed) conferences like SCCS Bengaluru allow for fluidity, while also offering a whole bunch of learning and engagement opportunities. Here’s to hoping that other conferences learn from them, and that we have more such spaces!
Closing with a picture of Team Veditum with friends when we snuck out for a side quest of desserts!
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