South India community volunteering holiday

Planet

CARBON REDUCTION
Our project is in India, our visitors, unavoidably, must fly to reach us. We encourage them to compare flight emission alternatives and also to contribute to connected renewable energy projects.
All meals provided in our guest house are either vegetarian or vegan, using fresh, locally sourced seasonal products. Any food waste is composted and used in our guest house garden.

ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE
The project guest house was built entirely from bricks, dried naturally in the sun, using the earth on which the building stands. The pillars and beams are made from easily renewable wood. The building was constructed to follow the natural contours of the land, and around the existing trees; none was removed for construction. Only tea bushes were removed; these are not indigenous to the Nilgiris. All rainwater in the property is harvested, and grey water is used in the garden. The Nilgiris is plastic-free and all recyclable materials are gathered to be recycled.

Entrance fees, on our nature tours into the nearby Mudumulai and Bandipur forests and to the Genepool visitors’ centre, are included in the price. These support the welfare of forests which are run by the States’ Forest Departments, and managed by tribal people whom they employ, to ensure that their own rights are safeguarded and those of the wild and bird life, and nature around them, are properly protected. When visitors are taken to the nearby forest and Tiger Reserve, all the rules around tourism of the Forest Department and their guides’ instructions are strictly observed. In the local area, around the guest house, the advice of local, especially tribal, people is sought as they are alerted if an elephant comes into the area, to avoid any confrontation. Guests are not allowed to walk out of the compound when it is dark, as there can be leopard in the vicinity. Bird watching walks are led by tribal youth who explain the birds' habitat and behaviour. Talks are organised on tribal life and culture, so guests are introduced to the special features of the Nilgiris Biosphere, where the project is based, for which every effort is made to ensure there is full respect.

Through our project, volunteers are able to support a local nature conservation NGO, the Shola Trust, whose work to protect the local shola includes promoting elephant and wildlife/human co-existence and the removal of lantana, a highly damaging non-indigenous invasive plant that obstructs the movement of wildlife, even elephants, in the reserve and prevents the growth of native species.

Most significantly, some of our volunteers support the administrative work of the sister organisation to the local conservation NGO, and contribute to their strategizing, in their pioneering business removing lantana from the nearby forest and in exploring its conversion to biochar, which captures its carbon, which can be buried in the forest to restore the growth of indigenous species. This has the quadruple benefit of removing devastating invasive plants, protecting the forest and the wildlife, capturing carbon and employing tribal people.

People

LOCAL ECONOMY
Our volunteers, and the participants in our nature tours, stay in our guest house. This is totally owned by the tribal community, through their main community organisation, and all profits from our activities are donated to those organisations. No income from any of our activities leaves the community.

EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY AND DIVERSITY
As well as through these financial contributions, the objective of our entire Project is to support the local Adivasi, indigenous people, and their charitable organisations, through the volunteering of skills and through training, as required and sought by them. These first people, as in other parts of the world, have suffered the abuse of their rights, especially with their forced removal from the land on which they have lived for tens of thousands of years, and they continue to face exclusion and prejudice. Our volunteering projects are specially designed to be meaningful to both the volunteer and the tribal organisations, with whom they are first agreed, to help them counter this disadvantage. They cover a wide range of areas - from education and training, health and disability, social welfare, culture preservation, livelihood promotion and conservation. Guides on our own nature tours include tribal youth, and our guest house employs tribal staff as well as those from the local village. We have no employees who are not Indian. Everyone is paid competitively in relation to local market rates, with security of employment as opposed to the alternative largely day wage employment on offer. They also have full benefit of all tips, equally divided. During the guest house’s empty months, especially during the monsoons, training sessions are arranged for staff around tourism guiding, cooking and other hospitality roles within the guest house. We also employ a team, representing each of the local tribes, on a tribal community oral history project.

Some of our volunteer visitors are in their eighties, with limited mobility, others have sight or hearing difficulties, many visitors have dietary difficulties; our team makes sure that all their needs are met.