Community Forest Rights Granted in Pillur, in a First for Tamil Nadu
December 10, 2022 By Community Well-being team In a groundbreaking motion and a first for Tamil Nadu, 13 villages in Pillur region were granted Community Forest Rights (CFR) in late November. This achievement is following decades of dedicated activism and grassroots work by Keystone’s Community Wellbeing team, local Forest Rights Committees (FRC) and local government […]
Empowering Women Barefoot Ecologists in Biodiversity Hotspots Across India
November 10, 2022 By Bhavya George Barefoot ecology is a more inclusive approach to environment conservation than what has been practiced in the mainstream, and promoted in the global North. While western notions of wildlife and environment conservation entail cutting off access to ‘Protected Areas’ in order to keep them pristine, barefoot ecology looks at […]
Supporting 100 Paddy Farmers with e-Literacy in Wayanad
November 2, 2022 By G. RamachandranProgramme Coordinator – Community Well-being Keystone’s Community Well-being team in Wayanad is facilitating the registration of over 100 paddy farmers on a rolling basis, for the royalty benefit scheme and crop insurance scheme at Orapp, located in the Edavaka gram panchayat. A large part of the community in Orapp, Wayanad, […]
Tribal-Led Campaign for Traditional Foods in Central & Eastern India
October 17, 2022 By Rohan MukerjeeProgramme Coordinator – Networks & Alliances The global food crisis is intrinsically tied to the climate crisis. Chemical-based agricultural methods that overpower gentler, smaller-scale methods of growing food that have persisted for centuries have warped our food systems, with the fatalities being nutrition, diversity and precious, healthy soil. And when […]
Evolving Ideas with the Coimbatore Collector and Officials
September 23, 2022 By Vinitha Murukesan and Bagavanidhi M.Project Coordinator – Community Well-being (Coimbatore)Technical Coordinator – Governance We’ve been working with the Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP) for seven years now, with our projects largely based in the hills. With the two projects that were active in the plains (Periyanaickenpalayam and Narasimhanaickenpalayam) coming […]
Community Well-being at the HDCA Conference 2022 in Belgium
September 22, 2022 By Kanmani PalanisamyCommunity Well-being Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum theorized the ‘Capability Approach’ framework in the 1980s as a unique perspective on welfare economics. He proposed that a person or a community’s true capability (considering real world obstacles) to achieve a life that aligns with their values must be assessed rather than […]
Steering the Shift to Organic Methods in Tea Farming Across the Nilgiris
September 19, 2022 By Harshavardhini AngappanTechnical Coordinator – Ecological Restoration In May 2022, our Biodiversity Conservation team began a three-month training programme on traditional and organic farming methods for tea growers in the Nilgiris from INCDOSERVE. Also called Industrial Corporative Tea Factory, INDCOSERVE members constitute around 30,000 small tea farmers in the Nilgiris and is […]
Book by FAO Mentions Last Forest as a Case Study
September 12, 2022 By Madhu RavishankarHead Office, Last Forest This month, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published Labelling and Certification Schemes for Indigenous Peoples’ Foods, a first-of-its-kind review that spotlighted Keystone Foundation and Last Forest Enterprises. The publication looked into the role and potential of labelling and certification in marketing […]
Barefoot Ecology Training as a two-way learning experience
Bhavya George The socio-ecological changes observed and experienced due to Climate Change for sure have an impact on the natural resources, food security, health and livelihoods. The threat is especially severe for the indigenous and local communities dependent on natural resources for their everyday life. It becomes important in that context for the communities to […]
Exploring Public Histories through Community Narratives: A researcher workshop and partners’ visit – June 2022
An ongoing project with the British Academy, titled ‘The Ownership of Public Histories’ or TOPHI for short, has supported indigenous groups who have been engaged in conversations and community research on community histories, traditional knowledge, documentation of traditional cultural expressions and building resources for aiding intergenerational knowledge transfer. A key component of the project has […]
