Dularia

Dularia is an immersive education centre which empowers socio-economically disadvantaged indigenous Santal tribal communities in West Bengal, India, to generate livelihood through regenerative practices.

Santals are one of the largest indigenous tribes of India. In the state of West Bengal, they work primarily as rice farming labourers using toxic chemical pesticides and fertilisers, which devastate the ecosystem and damage their health. To provide them with regenerative livelihood alternatives, Dularia promotes natural farming, natural building, agroforestry, indigenous herbal medicine, and natural arts and crafts.

In order to facilitate true empowerment, Dularia is autonomously run by a team of Santal tribal members, led by a Santali woman, who take all the day-to-day decisions, with national and international experts who support them each year through workshops and trainings.

To date, its major milestones are:

• Using permaculture techniques to restore a degraded plot into a thriving and diverse ecosystem within two years.
• Building natural building structures integrating vernacular art with modern building techniques, and demonstrating the use of upcycled waste and locally abundant materials as alternatives to cement.
• Demonstrating natural rice farming as a viable alternative to the current toxic practices by applying biochar and “Jeevamrit”, a traditional microbial inoculum, to regenerate soil.
• Developing entrepreneurial skills of Santal Tribal team members so that they can start generating their own livelihood.