A Vision for the
Himalaya of KumaonThe SOS Foundation
is a registered public charitable trust, founded by Amrita Chengappa and Vineeta
Shekhar, with the aim of improving educational, social, and environmental
development here in Kumaon.
By involving external parties, this local project does not
only produce new ideas and solutions for problems which are globally relevant,
but it also stimulates the rural population into participating in personally
beneficial economic & educational activities.
Humans are a functioning part of ecology; we have co-evolved with all other
life forms; we are dependent upon them and they on us. Diversification means
strength- working with the patterns shown to us by nature, and evolving
alongside plants and natural environments means that we will not have to waste
energy to maintain an unnatural system. To
develop successfully we can work alongside rather than against the mixture of
life which supports our own.
The SOS
Foundation intends to proceed by this synergy, maintaining diverse inputs and
activities, transient communities who contribute towards holistic research; an
attitude which is open to naturally occurring patterns and consequences, and a
group intelligence which dismisses the concept of ego or ownership: Human input
plus nature’s patterns.
Food, forests,
people, culture and biodiversity are inseparable strands of the same sustainable
story. They require support, patience, and intelligent observation for us to
understand their synergy and replenish what we have destroyed.
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