“Koottam 2025 is a celebration where volunteering takes centre stage,” says Gautham Ravindran, CEO and co-founder of Volunteer For India (VIF), the NGO organising the competition in affiliation with the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation. The fete is ready to happen on April 26 and 27 at the Tagore Theatre in Thiruvananthapuram and shall be inaugurated by Kerala Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs minister GR Anil.
Touted as the largest volunteering competition in the nation, Koottam was born out of a dialog between the co-founders of VIF, Ramalingam Natarajan and Gautham, about how “to make volunteering more accessible and interesting for people.”
Founders of Volunteer for India, Ramalingam Natarajan and Gautham Ravindran
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“Our discussion led to the concept of a volunteering carnival. At a regular carnival, everyone has fun with entertainment, games and so on — bringing the community together. We wanted to add the idea of volunteering to this setting, especially with people shying away from volunteering without understanding its true meaning and making it too serious. We want to make it fun,” says Gautham. VIF, he provides, is an organisation aimed to deliver social change by way of structured volunteering programmes.
The venue is split into two sections — whereas one is targeted on volunteering, consisting of workshops, stalls by NGOs, and so forth, the different may have parts of a carnival with a pop-up market, sport and exercise zone and Kutti Koottam, a chosen area for youngsters, the place storytelling classes, improv, origami workshop, open mics and so forth will happen.
The competition may also have a volunteering station, the place folks can interact in 20 to half-hour of volunteering actions to get a hands-on expertise of volunteering. “These activities can be as easy as upcycling a T-shirt into a cloth bag or making a seed ball you can take home,” Gautham provides.
“This time around 34 NGOs have booked the stalls to introduce their work through engaging activities. We will also have panel discussions around politics, content creation and its impact on society,” says Gautham. There may also be workshops associated to sustainability.
The carnival has two fundraising concert events by the Sufi band, Mehfil-e-Sama and Jassie Gift on April 26 and 27 respectively. These are the solely ticketed occasions at the carnival and the cash will help a mission referred to as Gift a Story run by VIF, targeted on constructing libraries for the underprivileged.
This is the second version of the carnival. Last yr, it was organised at the Loyola School, Sreekariyam, in affiliation with round 16 NGOs and participation from round 2000 folks.
Participants at Koottam 2024
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“The idea is to slowly grow this into a larger festival where people from different walks of life come together and celebrate. However, in the long run, we want to have smaller events throughout the year,” says Gautham.
He provides that the Koottam neighborhood has been energetic in the previous few months with initiatives corresponding to seaside clean-ups and meals distribution drives with round 400 volunteers concerned in the actions.
Register by way of www.volunteerforindia.com/koottam-carnival free of charge passes. Tickets for the concert events can be found on bookmyshow.com.
Published – April 23, 2025 04:02 pm IST
