UK company to adopt village in Kootickal valley

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala’s shores and hills are  not only enchanting for a foreign tourist but also to corporates as places to discharge their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in a committed way.Six Acre, a tiny hamlet nestling in the Kootickal valley of  Kottayam district near Mundakkayam, is poised to lighten up the hills with a composite solar lighting system once a proposal forwarded through Kuoni group, one of the world  renowned travel operators is approved by a UK-based IT company.Kuoni  had been facilitating  tour packages for employees of  the  company in the past few years. Around 60 families of  labourers who are residing along  the stretch of  hillocks at Six Acre and who are employed in the surrounding plantations, are poised to receive the benefit from solar power to meet their day-to-day requirements thereby minimising the dependance on conventional energy sources.The UK company had evinced keen interest in bettering the lives of  the weaker sections of society in areas having plantation and backwater homestays where the company’s employees spend their annual vacation.  Kootickal had thus become a ground to implement CSR.The proposal for the solar lighting project is billed at Rs 10-12 lakh. The Kootickal valley had also caught the attention of  Women’s Travel,  a leading  Swiss Travel magazine,  which had expressed keen interest to support Kudumbashree projects, according to P R Suresh Kumar,  travel photographer associated with Homestays in Central Travancore.The proposal is to provide aid  both by way of finance and infrastructure backing,  to make the initiative more result-oriented. A project report in this connection is on the anvil. Slowly but steadily, the spin-offs of  the tourism sector in the state is turning to be  positive, feels George Abraham Pottamkulam,  proprietor, Stayhomz.“Many of  the foreign tourists coming to the homestays in the Kottayam-Idukki region are a sensitive lot who are  keen to get close to nature and to surrounding  social settings in select locales.  They want to translate their involvement through concrete gestures as part of  CSR or otherwise which are truly inspiring,” he feels.