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OAEC and the WATER Institute are excited to welcome world renowned water conservationist Dr. Rajendra Singh to OAEC! Join us for a movie screening and workshops.
On Friday, March 31st at 6:30 pm we will gather to discuss how to revitalize and heal landscapes through community-driven decentralized water retention. This evening will include a screening of the award winning film “Reviving Rivers” followed by a presentation and brief panel discussion with Dr. Rajendra Singh (Tarun Bharat Sangh), Brock Dolman (The Water Institute), Zachary Weiss (Elemental Ecosystems), Ethan Hirsch-Tauber (The Water Folk), and questions from the audience.
On Saturday, April 1st, 2023 8 am – 4 pm we will be hosting Dr. Rajendra Singh as he leads a day-long workshop on how the land can be reshaped to facilitate healing and abundance. Discover practical solutions and techniques that have been successfully implemented around the world to help promote positive ecological and social change. Learn about real-world success stories for bringing water and life back to landscapes. Discover how these practices could be applied to heal California, as well as the rest of the United States. Saturday’s workshop will include an infamous OAEC organic vegetarian lunch.
Continuing Education
*Please note the below event is not at OAEC
On Sunday, April 2nd 8 am – 5 pm spend the day deepening the learnings from Saturday’s workshop and turning it into practice with Zachary Weiss of Water Stories. This will include reading land, interpreting observations from a 40 acre landscape and looking at the specifics for what interventions could be done there. This will also include a model building exercise to get your hands dirty and learn some of the specifics at a smaller and quicker scale. If the opportunity presents itself and the landowner agrees, you may have the opportunity to engage in some kind of water retention intervention on the landscape as well. Sunday’s workshop will be held at a different site in Healdsburg, a 40 minute drive from Occidental. Lunch is NOT included for Sunday’s workshop, please bring your own bag lunch.
Information about Dr. Rajendra Singh
In the driest region of India, Dr. Rajendra Singh has helped bring water back to 250,000 wells, revive 13 rivers, increase the number of harvests possible in a year, and decreased the temperature in the region by 2 degrees.
Trained as an ayurvedic doctor, Rajendra found himself in Rajasthan, India at the aid of sick, elderly patients. In this region, people had to walk many miles a day to retrieve their water. Women and girls weren’t able to go to school, as it took many hands and many hours to carry the water needed for their family’s daily life. Sickness and hunger were commonplace. The young people had all migrated to the cities, in search of a better life.
One of these elderly patients showed Rajendra a more powerful way to help the community – by storing the seasonal monsoon rain in the earth using traditional water tending methods. Over 35 years Rajendra, through his organization Tarun Bharat Sangh, has brought water back to thousands of villages throughout Rajasthan. This was done through the process of Community Driven, Decentralized Water Management. Through simple techniques of creating earthen water bodies called Johads, rivers in the driest part of India were revived.
If there has ever been a time for this approach to spread, it is now – and if there has ever been a place that needs it, it’s California.
