About the Project
The Climate Resilience Project is an initiative dedicated to supporting communities affected by the detrimental impacts of climate change. It is founded by Alekha Choksey, a young 12th-grade student at Bombay International School passionate about global issues, particularly the pressing challenges posed by climate change.
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The Climate Resilience Project aims to work directly with the residents of Beed, Maharashtra to better understand the trials and tribulations that they face as an agricultural community faced with devastating impacts of climate change. Further, it will attempt to understand the modes of resilience, both adopted and developed, that the residents of Beed have displayed in the face of these climate challenges and their social, economic, and cultural implications.
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The way the project will go about doing this begins with the CRP (Climate Resilience Project) Case Studies. These will be carried out by administering narrative interviews to the residents of Beed, with questions covering topics such as their unique experiences of the droughts and their consequences, their experiences migrating owing to adverse weather conditions, and their social and economic reception in these destinations. Following the case studies, the project will conduct a thematic analysis of the data generated, and will be appropriately anonymised before making up the corpus of a research paper titled, “Shallow Waters: Examining Displacement, Migration, and Climate Resilience among Urban-Village Communities in Beed.” The paper will conduct an incisive discussion into the climate and sociocultural conditions of Beed, while examining the case studies through appropriate and relevant theoretical frameworks.
The Climate Resilience Project will fundraise to help raise money for the Residential School that will help families build resilience against climate change. Lastly, it endeavors to set up a robust Resource Network of organisations that will provide training and sustained support in vocational, health, sanitation and many other areas to NVSK so that it can amplify resilience across the 289 plus villages it supports.
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“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” - Dr. Jane Goodall
About the Founder
Alekha Choksey is a student at Bombay International School in Mumbai, India, where she studies Business Management, Physics, Chemistry, Spanish, English, and Mathematics as part of the IB curriculum. Alekha's true passion lies in sustainability and environmentalism. Noticing the lack of an Environmental Society at her school, Alekha took the necessary steps in founding one. Her work leading this Environment Society is informed by environment-related enrichment opportunities she has participated in, including the ‘Social Entrepreneurship for Young Changemakers’ course offered by Columbia VFA, and participated in the Harvard Sustainability and Innovation Challenge.​In addition to her dedication to environmentalism, Alekha is actively engaged in a range of extracurricular activities including dance, art, and photography. She has been training in Odissi since 2012 and recently completed her Manch Pravesh, her first solo performance.