Forests are our absolute first love at Vertiver!  We’ve shaped and moulded stories across digital and print media on forests in Madhya Pradesh, Sikkim, Karnataka, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Assam and more. So when we were asked to serve as communication partners to USAID’s IeMAC programme in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh we could hardly wait to get started!

What’s in a name? Well, we think everything! We named IEMaC, an acronym sounding like a remnant of the early Apple days but which happen to express exactly what the programme focus was-  Innovations in Ecosystem Management and Conservation. We developed a brand identity for IEMaC then developed multi-lingual content creating brochures in Hindi, English and Kannada. Since the landscape areas were Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, we created an outdoor campaign that featured distinct fauna of both areas through stylized illustrations. Next, we created eight different play scripts to educate people on the importance of sustainably harvesting different Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs). These were performed in street theatre and also on Radio on talk shows. We also documented various aspects of the progamme’s developments on film over three years. This included making several trips into the far reaches of the forests and learning how the programme was working with communities through technologies, afforestation and new economic models like Farmer Producer Organizations.

Some of our work on the project also included: 

1. Support Project Implementation & Community Outreach over three years
2. Document Waste-to-Energy plants implemented in a Public-Private Partnership Model
3. Create materials to train and build the capacity of communities
4. Document how SHGs are working to develop local nurseries and adopt other interventions
5. Design of UI/UX for a web-based decision support tool