In a little more than a month, three children from Sheetal’s mobile crèche play group would be on their way to the harbour city’s Hong Kong Wetland Park to learn the significance of marshlands, eco-diversity and mangroves. Accompanying them will be three children from a mobile crèche in Wadala, a teacher and a representative of the Conservation Action Trust (CAT), the NGO currently developing the Mangrove Wetland Centre (MWC) between Bhandup and Kanjurmarg in Mumbai.

Organised by the Ramsar Convention, endorsed Wetland Link International (WLI) — a global network of wetland education centres — the children of these daily wage labourers will now interact with children from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Korea, China and Singapore in a one-day programme at the Hong Kong park on April 26.

According to Georgina Fernandes, an MWC representative, in August 2007, WLI announced a competition for all Asian countries, winners of which were to be invited to visit the Hong Kong Wetland Park. Two wetland centres from India participated — Mumbai’s MWC and a Chennai park.

Fernandes says, “It’s amazing that these uneducated kids who can’t even read and write, have won the competition. In all, eight groups from India participated. Besides these two mobile crèche groups, the rest were children of middle-class English and Marathi medium schools. Each one of them sent their report to the WLI, via mail. But these kids also attached a video clip of their puppet show and play.”

Ulka Raut, supervisor of Lokhandwala mobile crèche, adds, “These children may not have formal education, but they witness construction activities on a day-to-day basis and see the constant destruction of the environment. They are also always traveling due to the nature of their parents’ job which enables them to see and experience more than other children.”

As part of their training to enter the competition, the children of the Wadala and Lokhandwala mobile crèches were given training in mangroves conservation, taken on field visits, given insight into the casualties of losing the wetlands. “Their skits, ‘Urbanisation and mangroves’, were simple and effective. Arranged and enacted entirely by these little kids, the skits showed how chopping of trees and construction of buildings render birds, butterflies, little fish and mollusks homeless. It showed intense observation and understanding of the subject,” Fernandes says.

Fifteen-year-old Jeevanmala who played the main protagonist in the play, says, “Today buildings are coming up everywhere and mangroves are getting killed. But when flamingo comes flying from outside this country where will they go?” 11-year-old Nikhil Kamble adds, with a sense of finality: “If our nature dies, we will die soon because there will be floods.”