Country: India

Organization: Olavipe Home Stay

Year the initiative began: 2004

Project Website: Website

Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions:

• Main barrier addressed: Lack of local input
• Main insight addressed: Develop community assets

What is the goal of your innovation?
A village which hosts a homestay, mirroring the best of the village to guests, and assuring integrated benefits to the village.

How does your approach support or embody geotourism?
Olavipe is a homestay which truly addresses the needs of the entire village it is part of in a very comprehensive way. Each villager is encouraged to embody an attitude and self-image to match global citizenship, and still represent a genuine local villager. By naming the homestay after the village, the satisfaction of our numerous guests and any publicity the received directly benefits the village itself. The enhancement of our collective self-image was re-enforced by a photography exhibition of the village by guests. We now receive all guests with the full conviction that we are worthy of their visit. As a result, we want our village to be as transparent as possible. Activities for the visitors in the village include walks, cycling through the various villages, meeting and talking to English speaking villagers (especially children), visiting the farm, country boat rides in the kayal (backwater), feeding fish/prawns in the season, manual propagation of vanilla, and watching a cow being milked manually etc, are all directed at visitors experiencing local life as it really is. By encouraging visitors to interact more with the village, we have even made a conscious decision not to build ‘regular’ leisure features such as a swimming pool.

Describe your approach in detial. How is it innovative?
Experiencing a real local village, whilst maintaining visitor comfort is the basis of our approach. Making the village itself more comfortable for the locals was our first step. A volunteer group of young villagers was sponsored to create an attitude of “giving” in the village. This core group has helped us to focus on the elderly, handicapped, village beautification, promoting sustainable practices, plus enhancing hygiene and cleanliness. Hopefully this group will contribute to even more areas as we continue this project. Their efforts so far have resulted in the creation of a forum for elderly villagers including an annual picnic and monthly meetings, an Ayurvedic garden for elders to grow traditional medicinal plants for their own use, building an approach road for two handicapped children and supplying a wheel chair, a fund for elderly and other deserving people needing medical help. Other projects planned include promoting flowering plants and mahogany trees, replacing plastic fencing with more sustainable green fencing, and providing interest free loans for marriage of young ladies. We think it is innovative to the extent that a simple hospitality operation is being used to enact real social changes in a village.

What types of partnerships or professional developement would be most beneficial in spearding your innovation?
Our motivation is to preserve the best of the village in terms of relationships and lifestyle. This is born out of a belief that nations and the world itself are formed by families and communities, and hence retaining the best in families and communities will retain the best of this world. Without in anyway minimizing the importance of commercial viability, desires to prove “success through giving” as the only sustainable winning formula is our driving force. Association/partnership with anyone who truly shares this drive will be natural and effective for us.

In one sentence describe what kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
“Give more and receive more”: this will make our world a better place.

Describe the degree of success of your approach to date. Clearly define how you measure quantitative and qualitative impact in terms of how your approach contributes to the sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
We have not worked out any objective standards to measure the impact of what we are trying to do. If village acceptance, happiness and satisfaction of all the guests who have visited us (recorded by them in our guest book) are any indication, we would rate it as 100% success. We are fairly sure that all in the village now believe that we are doing something that is making a difference, which also results in even more visitors coming to spend time with us. Every visitor who stays here provides a stamp of approval for what we are, and who we are.

How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
We are experiencing an appreciable growth rate in the number of visitors coming to the village. This is without any promotional activities. We are inclined to believe that this is happening as our approach of total involvement of village is proving to be inviting enough for international travelers. Visitors truly appreciate the opportunity to watch/participate in the day to day life and activities of the village.

In what ways are local residents actively involved in your innovation, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
The core groups of youngsters formed to work in this project are turning out to be the moral force influencing village attitudes. As our objective is to have a village as home for the visitors, the designs and plans of the volunteer core group guides the plans, and what the homestay has to offer. This is enhancing their self-confidence, also relating a good portion of their sense of success to increases in the numbers of visitors coming to the village. This is making us a welcoming village, and a happier place for all to live.

Describe how your innovation helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues. How do you motivate them to act responsibly in their future travel decisions?
Visiting guests and photography exhibitions by visitors have reinforced the self belief of the villagers to remain what we are, with transparency a key factor. When guests move around the village they develop an understanding of our heritage. Many offer implementable creative solutions. With each new visitor, local pride is enhanced and it encourages them to keep the village cleaner and more beautiful. Hopefully, this should be influence enough for the locals to retain the best of the village and for visitors to chose locations of similar transparency in future.

Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? What is the potential demand for your innovation?
In the current situation of the village and at the current level of our operation, what we are trying to do is organizationally and financially sustainable. Potential demand for our innovation is not something that we have focused on and therefore, unable to comment.

How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
To begin with, the initiative was financed partly from promoters’ savings, and partly from the income stream from homestay operations. The homestay operations have now reached a level where the income stream can finance the initiative almost completely. We have about 15 regular staff. We also have over 20 volunteers who spend a few hours every month, and a full day every year for community activities. We also hold an annual dinner for the volunteers.

What is your plan to expand your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
Our focus was purely on the village and geographical expansion is not something in our plans. We believe that if our idea is good, other people may implement it in their locations, hopefully in a more effective manner. Within the village, we would like to expand the concept in its intensity.

What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
Ours is an approach based on giving. We have not felt any barriers for giving. Replicating will involve convincing others that giving more can lead to receiving more. That in itself need not be a barrier.

What is the origin of your innovation? Tell your story.
My name is Jacob Tharakan, born and brought up in Olavipe. Though I left the village in 1963 for higher education, my sustaining base till I took up employment in 1971 was Olavipe. Though I left the village technically in 1963, and followed up to live in north of India, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and Russia, emotionally I was always a part of the village. In 2000, my family of 12 siblings sat down to decide on settlement of family properties. Each of us was given an option to opt for our home, a century old mansion. In consultation with my wife Sumy, daughter Rosanna and son Antony, we expressed our interest to take up the responsibility. There were other siblings interested similarly. On taking a lot, it turned out to be our destiny and a very rewarding twist of destiny. The next was the economic challenge of maintaining a large mansion - and the concept of a homestay in Olavipe was born. For me Olavipe, ancestral home and my family were all interlinked and inseparable. So any initiative with my involvement in Olavipe had to incorporate all three. The story of Olavipe as told above was a natural extension of what one always was. I am in a way very specifically obliged to a nephew, who used an expression “pay back time” and a sibling who advised me to name the project after the village. In a way, it is the combined effort of 12 siblings and their children to pay back to a village that offered us a lot in formation, way of life and a desire to contribute. The story of Olavipe homestay, is a story of thanksgiving.

Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
Implementation of the concept involved three of us - my brother Antony , his wife Rema and myself. Antony and I grew up in Olavipe. Rema belongs to Kerala but lived in several parts of India while growing up. She is a media person. After his Master’s degree Antony left to work for the Government of India, lived in several parts of India and travelled to quite a few countries on work. I took up a banking job and lived in Middle East, UK, and Russia. In 2004 we three came together on an amazing journey back to roots and some hearts.

Please write an overview of your project. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the Google map located on teh competition homepage.
Olavipe homestay is a project hoping to combine a commercially viable operation with a greater objective of using this operation for larger benefits to the village where we are located. It is a remote rural area. By managing the operation in the interest of the village, the local people gained tremendously in self-image, global awareness, standards of cleanliness and hygiene. Most importantly, interest of the younger generation of the village has now expanded way beyond the village. Having met and interacted with over 50 nationalities of people who have visited us, we are now part of the global village. Olavipe, a tiny part in the cosmic game plan, is slowly but surely moving towards the plan itself!!

Contact Information
Mr. Jacob Tharakan
Your Job Title
Olavipe Home Stay
Thekkanatt Parayil, Olavipe - 688 526, Kerala
homestay@olavipe.com