Being Responsible

One of the first TBY-Vayali micro-credit beneficiary

Last year at the World Travel Market in London, one of the leading destination management companies from Cochin asked us this question. “All your talk about responsible tourism is fine. It’s easy for a property to be more responsible than a tour operator like us. They can make simple changes like install energy saving bulbs or setup rainwater harvesting in their property. They might purchase local produces. Even if we had aspirations to be a responsible tourism operator, frankly we don’t know how to do this. Do you have some suggestions?”

This kept me thinking and here are some observations posted on The Blue Yonder blog

Social enterprises redefining sector boundaries?

“I am investigating the possibilities of creating awareness of non -malignant palliative issues among various communities and to encourage community participation, and would like some ideas and advice. Thank you very much”


We are quite certain that not many travel companies will receive enquiries that are unrelated to holiday planning! Especially something like the one above. This was a message The Blue Yonder team received from a pathologist in South Africa recently. For us, this is a proof of what an impact a maturing relationship between two social enterprises can create. One- working to spread the community owned palliative care to rest of the world (Institute of Palliative Medicine) and the other- a sustainable tourism operator using tourism as a tool to bring attention of the world to successful and inspiring initiatives like Kozhikode model of Palliative care (The Blue Yonder).



Read the complete blog here

Revisiting River Nila in search of music...

Picture:A plaque announcing the inauguration of the foundation laying ceremony by David Stott from Australia.

David is a frequent visitor to India. It's a country that he calls home. Two years ago, David had to 'agree' to 'lay the foundation' of an innovative experiment in Kerala. He inaugurated the construction of the campus dedicated to the memory of legendary musician and spiritual nomad, 'Njaralathu Rama Poduval' who is credited for bringing out the temple related devotional singing style of 'Sopana Sangeetham' out to the public.

When The Blue Yonder designed a musical trail with young musical prodigy Harigovindan, the idea was to give voice to many unconventional musicians of lower strata of the society along river Nila. This half a day experience became an instant hit among travellers from around the world. Conde Nast traveler called our trip one of the '8 Great Trips' that give back to destination based on the content of this experience. As Harigovindan, who took up the role as a key interpreter says, "This initiative gave self-respect to our musicians in the region. It was a wonderful experience to have music-loving travellers coming to enjoy the unique music style of River Nila and its people'.

Harigovindan was 17 years old when his father, Njeralathu Rama Poduval died. Hari used to accompany his father occasionally during his travels and performances at various temples and public arenas in Kerala. Troubled that the “Idakka” that was his father’s life, lying unused after his death, Hari taught himself how to play the instrument to keep the memory of his father alive.

Soon he realised that his father's name and devotional songs were fading away from the public memory. He came across many other musicians whose voice were not even recorded in their whole life time. He had the foresight that a generation might live without ever experiencing all those magical voices. He approached the Government and many cultural stalwarts of the state proposing to build musuems and art school to preserve their voices digitally and give recognition to up coming artists. Other than hollow promises and unnecessary controversies, it didn't result in any thing productive. However Hari fought the system, got attention from the public and international travellers like David Stott.

Lecture demonstration of various drums including Idakka and Chenda at the Kalasramam

Exactly after two years of laying foundation for the music campus, David Stott along with a group of travellers interested in music and yoga came back to River Nila to see the developments in the location. Seeing a fully functional music school and museum with an open air auditorium and audio library, all David could say was "WOW"! This is solely an achievement of Harigovindan though he humbly acknowledges the generous support he received from ordinary public and travelling community for providing inspiration and energy to go after his dream.

"I didn't set this up because I wanted to do something selfish related to my father. I wanted to do something like this precisely for the reason that many such artists memories were fading away from our memories. For those people who spent their whole life dedicated to music and enriching our traditions, this is the cruelest thing to happen. Representing this generation, people like us have a responsibility to respond to our surrounding. This was mine and I am glad I didn't give up'  Hari says.

Picture above:
David Stott and a group of music loving Australian travellers in front of the newly constructed temple dedicated to music. Instead of a conventional idol of God or Goddesses, the temple has the 'Idakka' which was favourite musical instrument of Njaralathu Rama Poduval. What better way to pay respect to a man who spent his life dedicated to music, especially devotional songs?

Networking in Palliative care

18th International Conference of Indian Association for Palliative Care just concluded in Lucknow with a call to explore adopting social media as one of the tool to network amongst peers and share knowledge to bridge islands of excellence.

Delegates from Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Singapore, UK and USA along with their Indian colleagues attended the conference organised by Cancer Aid Society. Two sessions ran by n i i t i consulting on the importance of social media networking for promoting palliative care across the world received enthusiastic response. Except for the handful of delegates using twitter or facebook, rest of them were mostly using email as a tool for communication.

Case studies show-cased on the power of social media ranged from :

• Recent campaign to oust Hosni Mubarak in Egypt  and the role of social media in accelerating the downfall
• How sustainable tourism companies used facebook as a tool to network and raise funds online during the crisis of Cyclone Aila in 2009
• How footprints initiatives get support from innovative micro-funding model of worldnomads
• Real time results of how users of #IAPCON11 manage to network with peers in Australia, US, UK and rest of the world.
• Max Coop - a network promoting 'Open Health through Open Source
• Ushahidi platform on how effectively it was employed during Kenyan riots of 2008
• Nila foundation facebook campaign crowd-sourcing sketches for its publication

While the sessions ignited interest amongst novices to social media, many 'I-have-twitter-but-I-don't-use' delegates were urged to explore the potential of social media, while the 'converts' were urged to build up a palliative care wiki to encourage collaborative content creation about various experiments going around in different parts of the world.

Will be interesting to see some of the recommendations given to set up the next conference in Kolkatta is implemented.

Second part of the workshops specifically involving student volunteers and core team of Institute of Palliative Medicine will be on 19th Feb in Kozhikide.