MUMBAI: Keystone Foundation has been working in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), Central & Eastern India, and beyond, with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities since 1993. The corpus of work focuses on improving environmental quality, ecologically sensitive development, amplifying community voices, conservation, livelihoods, social enterprises, community wellbeing, culture, and other initiatives for sustainable living.
With a shared reverence for hills and forests and a love for nature, Keystone and Thought Blurb are natural allies in giving voice to the vital work the organisation does in partnering with indigenous communities.
The partnership aims to marry the competencies to create avenues for skill-sharing, learning and collaborative creativity.
Rural development expert and ecologist, Founder-Director of Keystone, Pratim Roy stated, “From Kotagiri to Mumbai, we want the teams to immerse themselves in each other’s environments through work retreats. We are creating opportunities for ideas to cross-pollinate. The objective is for employees of both organisations to explore avenues even beyond communication, to internships, field studies, team exchange programmes to allow both ecosystems to learn from each other. We look forward to Thought Blurb’s creative skills to bring alive the story of the land and its people.”
The teams are working together to build better communication and more innovative, effective ways to reach their audience for advocacy on ecological development, sustainable livelihoods, biodiversity conservation, climate change conversations, cultural conservation, and more.
Keystone Foundation is also the fountainhead for green shoot enterprises like Last Forest and Aadhimalai. Last Forest is a brand for traditional honey hunters in the Nilgiris, offering sustainable harvesting and value-added products, with profits benefitting the community. Aadhimalai is owned and operated by tribal producers – small scale farmers, foragers, artisans, and cattle-rearers across 147 villages. The enterprise was created to strengthen the livelihoods of tribal communities through fair, sustainable, and locally rooted economic opportunities. Thought Blurb will also be partnering with Keystone to develop creative solutions that help these two organisations engage further, transcend their current boundaries, and experiment with more innovative products and ideas.
Ecologist and director, Anita Varghese, sees the partnership creating greater impact with very nuanced and crafted communication. “We are dealing with very complex issues when it comes to indigenous cultures – forest rights, conservation, climate change to name a few. We need partners who have spent enough time absorbing the ground realities of what we do. We want to share what we are doing on the grassroots level, realistically and at the same time in a way that it engages the audience. We believe Thought Blurb will be instrumental in this effort.”
Vinod Kunj Founder, CCO Thought Blurb Communications said, “For us at Thought Blurb, this is a vital, meaningful work. Working with Keystone is like walking into a living university and coming back rich with knowledge every day. The Keystone team and their dedication to their craft, the land and the people inspire us to look beyond all that we have done so far. It’s humbling to partner an organization that expressly desires no hype, no hoopla, no projection, no exaggeration! So we are leaning towards innovative ways to tell the story of Keystone; even exploring a new pedagogy style of narration. As Pratim says, the idea is to evolve a communication ecosystem that is true to life.”
From Wildlife Departments to organic farming and rural artisans, Thought Blurb has forged partnerships with organizations that stand for ecological issues and indigenous community development.
