Sky Islands Awarded Grant by Shared Ecologies

Shared Ecologies, a program by the Shyama Foundation, has awarded Sky Islands—the forthcoming pan-Western Ghats platform administered by The Kodai Chronicle Trust—a one-year grant of Rs 3.4 lakhs. The grant intends to create environmental awareness through creative interventions and art, in this part of the Western Ghats. It will take the form of a fellowship which allows one writer a year of funding and resources required for them to represent indigenous and grassroots narratives around ecology, through text and images. It will also fund editorial and admin support for the same.

Twenty-six-old Murugeshwari, has been selected for this fellowship. She is a daily wage agricultural labourer who is a member of the Paliyar adivasi community, and she has been working with The Kodai Chronicle Trust for the last three years. Her writing has been published in The Kodai Chronicle, syndicated in Voices of Rural India and Adivasi Lives Matter, and anthologized in Between Heaven and Earth: Writings on the Indian Hills by Speaking Tiger. Murugeshwari lives in Bharati Anna Nagar, near Kodaikanal, in the Palani Hills.

This grant will also cover editorial support from the Sky Islands team, coordinated by Kamakshi Narayanan, TKC’s Tamil editor for the last three plus years. Kamakshi is a fourth-generation resident of Kodaikanal. She was born in Tiruchirapalli, studied in Chennai, has a PG diploma in homeopathy, and is deeply interested in Carnatic music and organic farming.

Shared Ecologies supports initiatives at the intersection of art and ecology – through critical, creative, aesthetic approaches, and collaborations with various disciplines and knowledge systems.

Sky Islands is an independent digital eco-publication and platform launched by The Kodai Chronicle Trust and based in the Western Ghats: one of the greatest and most threatened biodiversity hotspots on Earth. With a three-year track record as The Kodai Chronicle, Sky Islands seeks to produce stories from this beautiful region digitally and in multiple mediums, informed by lived experience; to showcase regional initiatives; and to provide tools with which to interact and navigate life in the hills. It launches in 2025.

‘We are excited to collaborate with Shared Ecologies on this opportunity that we created together, and welcome others who are interested in replicating the model they have created, or partnering in other ways,’ says Rajni George, founder of The Kodai Chronicle and Sky Islands.

For further information/to collaborate with us via CSR etc, please contact kodaichronicletrust@gmail.com.