Read September Report on our blog!

SLI creates a report about its work once a month. It includes various details about all the programmes that happened in a month as well as some feedback and pictures. The monthly reports starting with September 2017 will be posted on the page "Monthly Reports". Please enjoy these further information on our work.

Newsletter September 2017

Video: Former Interns talk about their time at SLI

Varshini and Harish spent 40 days as interns at the Sustainable Livelihood Institute as a part of their studies at Tata Institute. In this time they learnt a lot about farming as strategy for disaster management. At SLI they enjoyed the freedom of choosing their field of work and created for example their own gardening patch.

Chinrampatti - A Sustainable Livelihood Village in the making? -Part 1

On the 29th of April 2017, a team from SLI visited the small village of Chinrampatti in Vellore district as part of their follow-up field visit. What greeted them in this village far exceeded their expectations, and has now filled everyone at SLI with new hope for the future.

               Chinnapappa Thangavel, an enthusiastic resident and SLI trainee from Chinrampatti
with SLI director, Ram and Program Manager, Raja Ganesh.

From September 2016, three different groups of women had come from Chimrapatti to SLI to attend training programs. Following this, the village had prepared meticulously for the SLI field visit in April 2017 to showcase everything they had implemented in their village as a result of their training at SLI. From establishing and successfully running a community nursery (with over 50,000 plants) to conducting a health survey of the village to investigate how they can provide basic health care with ethno-botany knowledge they had gained from ‘Herbs for health’ training program in SLI, the villagers exhibited unique aptitude and capacity to make substantial change in a very short time. They had also organised a cattle camp on the day, and had prepared herbal remedies that they learnt during ‘Ethno-veterinary’ program at SLI.  

The SLI team consisted of Ram, our Director; Raja Ganesh, our Program coordinator; Parvathy, one of our key faculty members and Lakshmi Narayanan, our Government Liaison officer. While Parvathy provided expert advice at the cattle camp and discussed more ideas for ethno botany innovations for health with the women, the others interacted with the rest of the villagers and were approached by many, especially the youth, asking for more training programs. They were impressed by the villagers’ desire to learn more to improve their living condition, the conditions of their village and more importantly the youth expressed desire to train in livelihood options to stay in the village rather than go to the nearby town or city looking for work. This is a development that gives a lot of hope for future rural development initiatives, and The SLI team returned feeling that Chinrampatti could be a model village in the making where villagers themselves are taking initiative to bring in positive change.

  “It's not every day we get to visit a village as part of our follow-up that has adapted and utilised each one of our training programmes that it's village women have attended as an enterprise. Chinnarampatti panchayat is a small village of about 350 households in vellore district. Since a few months now, thanks to one panchayat functionary who has taken the responsibility to drive innovation in the village, the village had taken several interesting initiatives forward... Young men come up and tell us, "we don't want to leave the village, want to stay and work here, but, don't know what opportunities we can tap into", that is a promise. A very satisfying day...” Ram, SLI Director.

How did this small village start its journey in to sustainable livelihood?

Madesh with his nursery team at Pitchndikulam Forest, Auroville

It all starts with the story of one man, whose passion to bring  change to rural Tamil Nadu has now been taken up by his entire village. His name is Madesh. Madesh serves as a clerk in Tamil Nadu Panchayat. His relationship with Auroville goes back a long way, and he is devotee of Shri Aurobindo and the Mother. During one of his visits to Auroviille, he became friends with Mr. Loudres from Pitchandikulam Forest. His subsequent visits to Lourdres’ community, meeting Joss Brooks, learning about Pitchandikulam’s rural outreach programs left a deep impression on him. He realised that there are alternatives to what was happening in rural Tamil Nadu villages where globalisation and consumerism were taking over traditional livelihood options. He returned with a burning passion to ‘create a little Auroville’ in his Panchayat. He tried doing this in the Panchayat he was working at the time, but his senior officers were not interested, so he got a transfer and moved to his native village of Chinrampatti where he knew he would be supported in this initiative.

In September 2016, under the leadership of Madesh and support from their Panchayat, the first group of women came from Chinrampatti to attend ‘Raising Nursery and Maintenance’ training program at SLI. They have now set up a thriving nursery on peromboke land around Chinrampatti, with over 50,000 plants, mostly using the seeds they were given during the training. They are supported by their Panchayat through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

This was followed by an SLI field visit in October 2016. This visit helped to further develop the nursery, and plan for future training. Two more groups of women from Chinrampatti visited SLI in April 2017 to attend two different training programs; namely, Ethno-veterinary & clean dairy practices, and Herbs for primary health care. The second field visit happened soon after these programs, and within that short time, the villagers had already identified 40 different herbs in the village area that could be used for primary health care and ethno-veterinary practices.

Future plans?

The community of Chinrampatti has requested SLI to organise training for them in five different areas including sustainable agriculture, waste management, marketing and sustainable entrepreneurship. We are currently in the process of designing these programs for them. The community of Chinrampatti is in the process of expanding the nursery and planting more trees on poromboke land close to water bodies in the area. They are also in the process of using the 40 herbs they have identified in their region to make herbal remedy preparations for ailments identified during their health survey and establishing an herbal primary health care system in the village. Madesh continues to lead the village in visioning a sustainable future together, and taking concrete steps in that direction. The SLI team hopes to welcome groups from Chinrampatti here soon to continue this journey of sustainable livelihood development. 

* As this story continues to unfold, the team at SLI has organised more training programs, and other groups from Chinrampatti has visited our campus. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this blog soon! *

Visit of Additional Director, Entrepreneurship Development Institute, Guindy

Ms. R.V. Sajeevna, Additional Director, Entrepreneurship Development Institute, Guindy visited SLI on 23rd March 2017 and discussed with Executive members and Director of the Institute. It's an opportunity for both the institutes to share our experiences and explore possibilities to work and exchange ideas and resources.

RAHAMA team visit from Sri Lanka to Auroville

It was a wonderful experience to both visitor RAHAMA, an Organization working for the integrated model on recovery and reconstruction programs by targeting the poor and displaced  in Northern part of Sri Lanka and  the host, SLI, Auroville on learning front on SDG and Sustainable Livelihoods. After visiting various Auroville units viz., Auroville Earth Institute, Wellpaper, KOFPU, Aurospirul, Terrasoul, AVAG-Udhayam Fedaration, Auroville Bamboo Resource Centre, Pitchandikulam Bio resource Centre and learning from different experts like Joss Brooks, Alain Bernard, Inge, Parvathy, Bhubesh, Kathy, Ramasubramanian, Shayamsundar, Olaganathan, Deepti Sukumar, Dr. Chandrasekar, Fif and Hamesh, the visiting team shared their Action plan in a comprehensive way which includes some new the initiatives learned from SLI and Auroville. This visit added one more feather in SLI’s cap and we proud to be a catalyst for RAHAMA’s upcoming sustainable projects.

Interview with SLI Visiting Faculty Dr. Amina Ather in the Auroville Radio

Dr. Amina Ather is a Unani physician who has vast knowledge and experience in several parts of the world. She was at SLI in November 2016 for a few days to share her vast knowledge with the rural women who were undergoing a training programme on Women's Wellness. Here is an interview with Dr. Amina in the Auroville Radio.  

A Short write-up about Dr. Amina from the web:

Dr. Amina Ather , Presently working as Scientific Director, TSM (Traditional System of Medicine), Medizin Park Ruhr, Dusseldorf, Germany. Done her Bachelors in Unani medicine and Surgery,MD (Pharmacology – Clinical trial with single herb of Unani medicine, PhD ( Empowerment of Muslim women through green pharmacy) and MCA (masters of computer Application) . She Has been nominated for guinness book of records for creating database of medicinal plants from 12 countries and recoding photography digital source. Has been working in the field of TCAM since 2001 , has been awarded by ford foundation to create 24 entrepreneurs from zakat money . Has covered more than 700 schools and 300 villages in india and around the world on educating women in health education , she has 17 patents of herbals cosmetic products with halal certification , and 2 from FDA . At present she is working with Medizin Park Ruhr , Castrop Rauxel , Dusseldorf , Germany as scientific director for TCAM to develop opportunities for TCAM fraternity in academics , research and training in Europe with the support of EMA and EPMA (European Medical Association and Association for predictive preventive and personalized medicine).She would be the first unani physician to start her practice in Europe as a physician with the support of MPR.

Interview: Culture is important for Sustainability - Prof. S. Swaminathan

18th October 2016, Bharat Niwas.

How can you disconnect sustainability with culture and heritage, is Sustainability disassociated from Culture, what is sustainability? It is not only about living being, plants and so on. Sustainability also confers to family, which is broken now.How do we attain sustainability for celebration of life? My simple answer to this is: Take life seriously and enjoy yourself.

-Prof. S. Swaminathan





An interview with Prof. S. Swaminathan, co-founder of Tamil Heritage Group and director of Centre for Arts and Culture- Sudharsanam, Pudukkottai. Prof Swaminathan is a qualified mechanical engineer and a retired Prof. from IIT Delhi where he taught for over 3 decades. A man of many pursuits; his interests vary from science, architecture, literature to Art, music and developmental issues. He believes in cultural route to development and holds that understanding and exposure to cultural heritage could help people to enjoy and understand life better; he has beautifully tried to bring this idea into action through Sudharsanam. For further details please visit www.pudukkottai.org.

You have been advocating 'culture-scaping' for quiet sometime, can you elaborate the concept?

'Cultural-scaping', it is like land scaping, when I am sitting here I should know that I am in Tamil Nadu, in Auroville and within India. The things around you, the environment should make you feel that way. For example: if you go down, in the ground floor, the architecture is not Indian; nothing on the way tells me that we are in India. What I say is –we must have culture scaping. Why the pillar here cannot be similar to what it is in Ajanta? Our surrounding can tell a lot about our culture. For example each tree tells something about our culture. For instance if we take Saptaparni, it is mentioned in the Vedas and has medicinal values- this is mentioned in Sakuntalam. If we disseminate these information, people will know the significance of what is around us and the culture behind.

How would you brief the relevance of Cultural scaping?

This is an idea that you have got to feel and adopt on your own way. In your state, you are and should be surrounded by what your state can offer and not what London offers. But it is going in the different direction. For example where you come from has lots of Bamboo. In Bamboo what you see is the branches, the tree is underground and it had many values. The things around you should be able to make you feel and realize where you are. One should also understand the ramification of it.

What is the status of heritage and culture in today’s society?

Nobody bothers, now it is only something that is fashionable to talk in particular society, nobody bothers beyond that. All of us have accepted that anything foreign and western is supposed to be good. Our present civilisation has got numerous problems that we are realising now, for example global warming and so on, but there are other things as well: broken families which are also corresponding problems.

We have accepted certain things. For example we don’t bother if the lights or fans are running and no one is using them, we have learnt to live with it. In my time: we got electricity in our house only when I was in 8^th standard and we had very little things. We used to get a set of dress only on the occasion of Diwali. Both the rich and the poor person used to get same thing, the richer person will get slightly costlier dress but the difference was very minimal, one of the reason being that nothing very costly was available. But if you give me 2 lakh rupees today, I can spend it all within 5 minutes and from tomorrow onward I will ask you Rs 1000 a day to maintain those things- this is the kind of situation we are living in today. So, first of all we must understand- what are values in life today, contemplation which is absent today should be there. In the present society, everywhere there is crowd but everyone is lonely.

What are the types of initiatives and institutions that you would like to see that is required for understanding of culture and heritage?

Don’t you think you can imagine it yourself? Why should somebody like me, who is almost reaching 80 tell you what is needed. You know it better; you should decide what is better for you. You should not bother with experience and so on. For example: 40 years experience may not be any more than 1 year repeated 40 times. But the point is: are we able to think for our self. First of all, take life seriously and taking life seriously means, I can be happy provided my family is happy, my family is going to happy if my community is happy, my community will be happy if my town is happy, my town will be happy if my state is happy and so on. It is what Gandhi said “Oceanic circle”. People now-a-days should be able to take life seriously and think for sensible solution for all the problems.  

Where do you see the role of cultural understanding in sustainability?

How can you disconnect sustainability with culture and heritage: Is sustainability disassociated from culture; What is sustainability? It is not only about living being, plant and so on. Sustainability also confers to family, which is broken now. For example: today husband and wife don't talk to with each other because they don't find time for each other. Sustainability starts form the family- at present , the children do not have time to spend with their parents and the parents do not have time to guide them, provide them company, celebrate life- sustainability of family is important and needs to be acknowledged. If we can have fossil fuel forever or not is important but a different matter, what is important is how do we attain sustainability for celebration of life? My simple answer to this is: Take life seriously and enjoy yourself. You don’t have to except what I say. You got to contemplate on it, find out your own solution, read books, have discussions and have your opinion. I want the people to think for themselves.