CHAMARAJPET:A foundation named after a little village in central Karnataka is now active in the city. Hoovinahole Pratishtana recently honoured Saalumarada Thimmakka, Karnataka’s ‘woman of the avenue trees,’ visually impaired educationist Ashwini Angadi and poet Nagathihalli Ramesh.

The foundation is five years old, but formalised its activities by getting a registration this year.

City Express spoke to Nandi J Hoovinahole, journalist and activist, about the foundation’s plans.

What does your foundation do?

We want to honour people who have been contributing to society, and we thought a good first step would be to honour three achievers this year. We plan to give out the Vishwatma (‘universal soul’) award to three people every year. It carries a plaque and a cash prize of `25,000. This year’s awards ceremony has been our biggest event so far.

Who chooses the awardees?

Anyone can nominate an achiever. We talk to about 50 distinguished people, including writers, artistes and retired judges, before finalising on the recipients. 
 

We make no distinctions of age, caste, religion or nationality. True to the name of the award, we want to extend the honour to people from abroad as well. This year, we consulted well-known people such as M N Venkatachalaiah, retired chief justice of India, and A J Sadashiva, retired High Court judge. We chose Saalumarada Thimmakka. Although she is well-known internationally for nurturing hundreds of trees along a highway, she has little money. Also, she is 104 years old, and it is our good fortune that we can honour someone like her.

What exactly do you do through the year?

We want to help children in rural areas develop skills. Although schools are always coming up in the villages, they don’t impart any universal values, or education relevant to the rural life. Most private schools are commercial in nature.

Children in government schools are culturally deprived. They are not exposed to poetry, dance and music and they don’t get to do anything on stage. We are trying to train them with art workshops. We mostly work with high school and college students.

Who are the people behind the foundation?

Besides me, we have five office-bearers who are poets, writers and lovers of culture.

One office-bearer is a civil contractor and philanthropist. This year, for our event, we had about 50 distinguished guests, including freedom fighter H S Doreswamy, former journalist P Ramaiah, and senior writers Chandrashekhar Patil and Nallur Prasad.