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Mrunal Ghosalkar

Nature Educator

Independent nature educator (YouCAN Earth Educator Fellow)

Cohort

4 Maniwali, Maharashtra 410101, India

Mrunal is an educator and conservation practitioner working with people on ground. She has completed the masters in Environmental Science. She has been working in the wildlife conservation field in various domains like research, working with local communities, awareness and conservation education. She is exploring the place of nature education by doing student centric activities. Her curiosity took her to various geographical parts of India from Maharashtra to chase hornbills in North East India, to living with pastorals on plains, to creating student network to communicate human-leopard interactions and safety measures in rural agriculture Maharashtra, to working in schools in central India, and to work with people in Great Indian Bustard’s home in Rajasthan’s golden desert. She is looking forward to integrate her experiences and management skills to drive a meaningful impact on ground in the field of environment and education.

Passion Project

Primary Focus Area

Place -Based Environmental Education, Environmental Justice & Community Engagement

Special Expertise

Designing free-flowing, forest-adjacent communities; using local language and locally available resources; connecting traditional beliefs (e.g. Waghoba worship) with conservation; facilitating reflective discussions on environmental issues, student-centric curricula rooted in children's observations; working with rural

Emerging Classroom co-creates a flexible, child-led curriculum with Class 5–8 students in Manivali/Karjat. Starting from what children observe—trees, birds, forests, farms and village life—Mrunal facilitates games (Memory Chain, Nature-e-Charades), perception activities (Nature Cloud), neighbourhood mapping, SeasonWatch tree tracking, bird sessions and emotional reflection. The project weaves children’s definitions of nature with local environmental challenges like garbage, water issues and sand excavation. All learnings are documented to create an open-source, rural place-based curriculum model.

Communities engaged

Rural village children in and around Manivali/Karjat; families living close to forests and rivers; livestock-keeping and farming households

Pedagogical Style

Place-based, student-centric and emerging; starts from what students observe and love in their village; co-learner stance; flexible outcomes (lets sessions flow rather than forcing a fixed plan); uses games, drawing, mapping, stories and citizen science; foregrounds students definitions of nature, emotional connections and local knowledge