August 2, 2023
By Divya Kilikar, Anagha C. & P. Chandran
In April this year, Keystone was offered the opportunity to choose 10 indigenous and local women from our working areas for an eight-month fellowship with the People and Nature Fund by Global Alliance for Green and Gender Action (GAGGA). The women, who were nominated by our various team members, are based in Eastern India (West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand) and the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. They receive financial support from GAGGA for their work in promoting gender rights, environmental justice, nature-based solutions, issues related to climate change, land rights for indigenous people, and amplifying the voices of indigenous women. In addition to a monthly stipend and a separate budget for equipment and trainings, the fellows receive logistical and technical support from their nominators at Keystone.
Here’s updates from the work done by the three fellows from the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve: Swafvana, Valliyammal and Parvathy.
Swafvana (pictured in cover photo) is a budding journalist who reports on environment, culture, climate and gender from her hometown in Mananthavady, Wayanad. In February this year, she completed a ten-month fellowship with our Climate Change programme, which invited renowned journalists and photographers to train aspiring journalists from rural areas in the NBR to report on local issues in local languages. During this time, the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) Network published one of her capitivating stories.
Following her graduation, Swafvana was nominated by Divya for the GAGGA fellowship. She has travelled to remote areas across Mananthavady and Wayanad to visit local community members who are long-standing residents and repositories of culture and local cuisines, artists striving to document snippets of local history, citizens who continue to practice local festivals and sing songs of nature and stories passed down through the generations, and more. So far, she has documented six such stories. We will be pitching these stories to media houses for publication.
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Velliyammal is originally from Velliyankadu, Pillur. She works in five villages within Pillur, where she supports women’s groups, two of which were launched by her. The group meets to discuss their perspectives on gender justice and equality, drawing from personal experiences and observations. Velliyammal is passionate about building better language and communication skills among women to help them develop a stronger voice for support and advocacy. She has completed two meetings with the women’s groups so far.
She also builds conversations with women placed in leadership roles within panchayats and other socio-economic structures. She has heard from women leaders who often face unequal treatment from society compared to men leaders in similar positions. Keystone will be offering a communications training in October to a cohort of women from Pillur to help them advocate for equality.
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Parvathy is from Attappady in Palakkad district, Kerala, and is working to document traditional agricultural practices and links to climate change in her area. She has conducted surveys in 17 villages; starting with an agricultural profile, along with understanding status of fallow lands, farmers’ access to markets, sites where NTFPs (non-timber forest products) are collected, status of land rights granted to communities, household facilities and access to civic amenities such as primary healthcare centres, roads, buses, and more.
The three fellows will be continuing their work till December 2023.
