Kakani International Training Centre, Nepal

This week, I have been on my travels visiting Kakani International Training Centre in Nepal.
This is a small Scout Centre about 23km away from Kathmandu, the capital located high on a ridge at about 2000m altitude on the edge of Shivapuri National Park. They have just under 44 hectares of land running down each side of the ridge.

The main Dormitory building at Kakani, with the 8000m peak of Manaslu in the background

At Kakani, they have many fantastic - eco ideas to make themselves incredibly sustainable and eco friendly, so we will run a series of eco-blogs about Kakani so that more people can see some of the incredible work that they are doing here.

One of the main things that they do at Kakani is grow a lot of their own food and this first blog will look at their food production.

Tea is the main drink here and is consumed morning, noon and night. Ask any pinkie and they will tell you the importance of a good Tea Break.... At Kakani they have 20,000 tea plants within their grounds which currently produce 8kg of tea each year. That's a whole lot of tea, but only fills about half of their needs. As the tea plants grow and more plants are planted they hope to make all that they need.

Eco can be refreshing! Fresh tea bubbling away at Kakani on the solar oven

Aside from all of this tea, Kakani provides food for itself by keeping chickens, goats, having a greenhouse and nursery to grow vegetables and having over 20,000 fruit trees - which mainly go into Jam. Kakani produces a lot of the food that it needs and then buys the rest from the local community, reducing food miles and helping the local economy.

The Greenhouse at Kakani

As everyone who has tried our Secret Life of Bees activity knows, bees are under threat worldwide and are really important not only for making honey, but also for pollenating our crops. So it was really good to find the bee hives at Kakani and see the bees doing what bees do best - making honey. True to form the bees here are under threat and only 3 of the 8 hives were inhabited. The bees here are being bullied and chased away by the somewhat frightening Asian Giant Hornets which are after the honey. A sting from this bad boy of the insect world can kill a human and the bees have little or no defence against them.

Inside one of Kakani's bee hives

Look out for future eco blogs about Kakani Internaitonal Training Centre - or if you want to learn more visit their website www.kakani.org

Jonathan (UK)

Programme Director

New Recycling Centres

For many people it does not sound that exciting, but here at KISC it has happened... we have new recycling centres all over our buildings!!

As I am one of the many Staff who deal daily with rubbish and recycling I am always keen to make our system more eco friendly, and, at the same time easy for our guests.

Swiss recycling is a very complex system and different from systems in other countries. This is why we try to make it easy and educational for our guests from all over the world.

But what’s new?

All our recycling centres are now exactly the same- and colour coded! 

The different containers have examples on them so it is no longer necessary to read the English to find the right container!

Happy recycling!

Michael (DE)

Maintenance Manager

Snow & Ice

Coming from a hot Mediterranean country when I think about ice it`s usually in a glass with a nice cocktail but this week I learnt there`s much more to it! After ice skating for the first time during our last staff night out and enjoying every second of it, I was looking forward to the Snow & Ice Combo up on the Frunden glacier with some other staff members and our awesome guides Eoin (IE) and Darren(ZA).

 

Glaciers are pretty awesome things and here’s 10 facts about them:

1. They are persistent bodies of ice that form when snow and ice don’t melt and keep accumulating for centuries.
2. Glaciers are constantly moving downwards or flow like a frozen river.
3. The Taku Glacier in Alaska is the thickest glacier in the world; almost 1.5km thick!
4. Glacier melt comes from both the ice that’s melting at the top of the glacier due to the sun’s heat but also from the bottom due to the heat from friction caused by the flow.
5. As glaciers move they eat away at the surrounding rock to eventually form valleys that have a U shape like the Gasterntal!
6. Crevasses form due to differences in glacier velocity as parts move at different speeds and directions, forces cause two sections to break apart, opening the crack of a crevasse.
7. The fastest glacier moves between 20-30m a day!
8. Even the planet Mars has glaciers!
9. When walking on a glacier one has to be very careful to avoid going over snow bridges that might have formed over crevasses since these are unstable and one might fall through!
10. You should spend more time on glaciers because it’s great fun!

 

 

During our time on the glacier we learnt how to walk safely being tied to each other, using ice axes and crampons. Progress across a glacier is sometimes slow because one has to negotiate crevasse jumps and check if the ice is stable enough for people to walk on. We also simulated a crevasse rescue where we were lowered into a crevasse and the remaining team rigged up a system to lift the person back up to safety which is what would be done in a real life situation.

 

So now you know a bit more about glaciers and how awesome they are I ask you to do one simple thing to give them a hand! Always switch off the lights when you’re not using them because global warming is a glacier’s worst enemy as it causes accelerated melting! So go out there and save those glaciers!

 

See you on the ice!

 

Jean-Marc (MT)

STS Summer 2012

New Eco badge

If you have been at KISC, I’m sure you’ve passed the tunnel on the way to the chalet from the campsite. Also I’m sure you’ve seen the beautiful art drawings on the wall such as the KISC Crystal, the Swiss flag, or the different badges.

A few weeks ago, we made some changes to our tunnel. One of them is………….

Ta da ~ KISC’s new Eco badge!! It’s so cool, isn’t it? Nobody has got the new badge yet. Come to KISC and get it!! Don’t know the way to earn the badge?

Let me tell you about it.

Eco is one of our 3 programme themes here at KISC (International Friendship, Eco and High Adventure). For each section we offer a bunch of guided and unguided activities you can do during your stay.

For the Eco award we have 5 activities you can participate in, divided in two different areas. You should complete 4 items from each area to gain the Eco award. One area is called ‘Natural World’. In this area you go out and explore and learn about nature. The other area is called ‘Eco Actions’ in which you can learn how to co-exist with nature and what you can do to protect the environment we live in.

Natural World

1. Take part in the Evolving Alps Hike
2. Complete the Gemmipass Eco Hike or the Electrifying Oeschinensee Adventure
3. Get more then 75 points in the Eco-I-Spy
4. Take part in a Centre Guided Hike, Snow & Ice activity, Climbing activity or any Winter activity
5. Go Bat Watching or stargazing with our Astronomy Activity

Eco Actions

1. Follow the Green Campsite Trail
2. Finish the Green Chalet Trail
3. Take part in the Solar Power Experience
4. Go to the Eco room, look at the displays and do one of the unguided activities using the leaflets there
5. Take part in The Secret Life of Bees

Find out more information about the different activities on our homepage. Why not be the first person who gets the new badge?!

Hye Mee (KR)

STS Summer 2012

 

Solar Power

As you already should know, there's a lot of cool stuff going on around the Centre. Did you know that you can easily pop popcorn with help from just a mirror and the sun?

I didn't, but today I was trying out what our Greenpeace guys are teaching our guests every day – Solar Power Experience.  It was pretty amazing. 

The earth fits 1.3 million times in the sun if you compare the sizes. It's huge! 

It's actually more than enough of energy to get from the sun to meet all of our energy needs. Isn't that cool?

So we started up with a description of the suns size compared to the earth. Can you see the little needle compared to the big ball? But the distance is not true in this picture..

We tried to heat a stove with only the help of some mirrors pointed in the suns directions. It warmed up really quickly. 

They also had a quiz with really good questions that you learned a lot from. A European uses fourteen times much energy than a person living in India, and an American twice as much as a European..  

And what makes an activity better than popcorn? Just a few seconds and the popcorn was all over the place. The heat goes up to 200 degrees in there.

Then we were using magnifiers to burn into wood, I was so amazed about this, it was so easy and fast. 

As you can tell from my words, there's a lot of amazing things you can try with just power from the sun. And if you want to make the world a better place, you should start using solar power instead of anything else, because as you can tell we have loads of it. And KISC loves to be ECO friendly as you know!

  

Kristina Bogren (SE)

STS Summer 2012