Kachugaon workshop
Seminars for community and NGO members and government staff
Building on the success of the community response to community meetings we began to hold multi-stakeholder meetings and seminars to make the general community aware of the problems of deforestation and the plight of the golden langur, to bring government, NGO and community stakeholders together. This served to integrate the communities as equal partners in conservation and to highlight the deforestation and golden langurs within the regional community. These meetings were often written about in local newspapers highlighting the golden langur as an Assam animal. They also gave more credence to the project and focused on the strongest conservation solution, when governments, NGOs and communities work together. In retrospect it also gave a focus for the new Bodoland Territorial Council members who, at these meetings quickly made the transition from militants to tribal government representatives.
There must be interest on the part of government and NGOs to participate and they must be willing and capable of meeting and interacting with community members on an equal basis.
These efforts built on the community meetings to bring the stakeholders together on common ground. They also played a large part in generating conservation contagion.