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Koottam 2025 volunteers
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“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 festival in association with the Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation. The fete is set to take place on April 26 and 27 at the Tagore Theatre in Thiruvananthapuram and will be inaugurated by Kerala Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs minister GR Anil.
Touted as the biggest volunteering festival in the country, Koottam was born out of a conversation 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
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“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 adds, is an organisation aimed to bring social change through structured volunteering programmes.
The venue is divided into two sections — while one is focused on volunteering, consisting of workshops, stalls by NGOs, and so on, the other will have elements of a carnival with a pop-up market, game and activity zone and Kutti Koottam, a designated space for children, where storytelling sessions, improv, origami workshop, open mics and so on will take place.
The festival will also have a volunteering station, where people can engage in 20 to 30 minutes of volunteering activities to get a hands-on experience 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 adds.
“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 will also be workshops related to sustainability.
The carnival has two fundraising concerts by the Sufi band, Mehfil-e-Sama and Jassie Gift on April 26 and 27 respectively. These are the only ticketed events at the carnival and the money will support a project called Gift a Story run by VIF, focused on building libraries for the underprivileged.
This is the second edition of the carnival. Last year, it was organised at the Loyola School, Sreekariyam, in association with around 16 NGOs and participation from around 2000 people.
Participants at Koottam 2024
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“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 adds that the Koottam community has been active in the past few months with initiatives such as beach clean-ups and food distribution drives with around 400 volunteers involved in the activities.
Register via www.volunteerforindia.com/koottam-carnival for free passes. Tickets for the concerts are available on bookmyshow.com.
Published – April 23, 2025 04:02 PM is
