Newspaper, Chilly and the Wildest Waves

Kanthari International

We were on the national newspaper! Our friends who had been playing carrom with the locals had had a little interview with The Hindu during the strike and it was a wonderful surprise for us this morning!

Iowans!

Today we are headed for Kanthari International, a social organization providing scholarship-based leadership program to social visionaries. Kanthari is a small hot chilly that grows in Kerala, and the word suggests ‘a hyper little child’ or ‘a lady who fights for right’. Kanthari has been helping a lot of entrepreneurs throughout the world, by providing a 12-month rigorous training on the projects that they are interested in. Interested ones from across the globe, apply for the program via an online application portal and present a proposal describing their idea of a social project. Then the applicants go through three layers of interviews to get selected. The training lasts for a time of seven months, after which, the participants are given an option to either build a fictious project there and go through daunting challenges, lot of drama and amazing skills, or leave to go back. But, almost all of the participants go through the fictious project task, which honestly seemed quite interesting to me.

Kanthari's motto

We also took a tour of the area, where there are a lot of interesting techniques used to make maximum use of resources inside the premise. The buildings itself are all made up of mud and brick, except for one bigger one. They have solar-powered electricity grid from which they sell the excess sometimes back to the grid. They also have a bio-gas plant for cooking purpose and the premise itself has a lot of beautiful plants and trees.

An interesting convergence of angles in a building inside Kanthari International

The jaaliwork in a brick wall inside Kanthari

Our professors! (Prof. Rebecca, Prof. Fuller and Prof. Anthony from the left)

Our student group!

Now, it was time for us to get a beach-front Ayurvedic massage! We were all very excited for this, but, unfortunately due to some mix-up, our booking didn’t have the beach-front option. So, we went around the resort, searching for the sea, and there we were, right beside the roaring sea, welcoming us with the wildest waves I’d ever seen! The sea made up for the missed massage for us! There was another wave waiting for us back in the hotel; the wave of sarees! LBC was treating us with a farewell dinner and we were planning on flaunting the Kerala sarees for the party!

The beautiful landscape inside Franklin Ayurvedic Retreat

UIowa URP team dressed up for the farewell dinner by LBC team!