The month we found ourselves surrounded by families. What we did, what we learned, and what is coming. We publish one of these at the end of every month.
One number
Families.
Without setting out to, this month brought families together in every room we held. Nine families cocreating a children’s cookbook. Nine families at the Kindness Kitchen. Families at the shore walk with the Madras Naturalists’ Society. Families at library mornings at Prakrith Arivagam.
Family is one of the core units we imagined ICF working with. It is heartening to notice that, without a deliberate plan, we ended up in kitchens, on beaches, and in libraries, alongside families choosing to spend time with us. That is the thread we notice looking back at August.
What happened
15 August — Align with Nature, a healing retreat with Vinoth
We joined a one-day retreat led by Vinoth of Align with Nature in Chennai, where around fifteen of us sat with one question: who are we, underneath our labels? We decided to hold this question daily and watch what arises. While it is easier said than done, our takeaway from the day was that by watching what arises everyday and aligning ourselves to it, one day at a time, we make room for the change to come about. As we change and evolve, we learnt that we have to keep adapting to our changing self, and honouring the space for that change to happen.
We sang, we danced, we prayed, and held a safe circle for each other to open up and share. Arasu spoke about a tournament anxiety he has carried since childhood, and how it is still hard to replicate his usual badminton shots in a competitive club match. Is it psyche, or something more? He is still figuring it out.
17 August, early morning — a shore walk with the Madras Naturalists’ Society
We joined MNS for a shore walk at Nochikuppam Beach, adjacent to the fishermen’s village on Marina, from 6 to 8 in the morning. MNS members Gowtham Marimuthu and Dr Kalpana Jayaram walked us through a whole hidden world of the shore, from starfish, crab and snail eggs to barnacles, Venus clams and decorator worms. It became a perfect precursor to what the day held for us — immersing ourselves in what living a sustainable life actually looks like. We hope this is the start of a new journey for the participants who joined us.
→ Madras Naturalists’ Society · A few pictures
17 August, afternoon — EPIC SS, Padur
Later that afternoon we drove down to EPIC SS in Padur for a school field visit. We have written about the visit in detail on our blog.
→ Read our EPIC SS field visit post
22 August onwards — Readathon Live, Season Two: seeding the season
Our second season of Readathon Live launched — an online reading circle for children eight to twelve, hosted by our eleven-year-old Sarangi. Enrolment has been slow. It might be the peer-led-learning model still being new for many families, or Sarangi still finding her voice as a young host, or simply the timing. We are watching without hurry.
What we are seeding this month is an in-house interplay between expression and creation. It is a commitment Sarangi will hold — to express more as a host, and to create alongside — and we hope the learnings from doing this will act in service of our participants and their families as well.
Around Readathon, we have been reaching out to local and global bookstagrammers for potential collaboration — Archana Narayanan, Sara Pinto, Paper Dolphin. Archana has agreed to contribute in a form that fits her constraints, whether a voice note, book recommendations, or an emailed Q&A. With Sara, who runs her own writing workshops, we are in conversation about her book club and how she might support Readathon.
We have also been hosting library mornings at Prakrith Arivagam in Perungalathur for a few months now — a space for children who want to come and spend a morning reading. This month, we opened up an invitation to the wider community to help us crowdsource a book map of libraries, book cafes, and reading nooks across the city. The map is a live spreadsheet, open for anyone to add to.
→ Readathon Live · The Book Map
28 August — Chennai Social, Act Two
Our second Chennai Social brought people from every corner of the sector’s table into one room. The gathering was hosted generously by Moondram Ulagam in Medavakkam, themselves a curated third space for founders, creators, and storytellers.
We opened playfully, with a game built around Chennai itself — its quirks, its texture, the ways it shows up in how we work. Picking sides, laughing, noticing mid-laughter how alike our worldviews had quietly become after years in the same field. From there we moved into deeper territory using Halfway, ICF’s own talking-cards deck built for social sector conversations. Halfway took us somewhere the icebreaker could not: why we are actually in this sector, how it has quietly reshaped us, and the images people outside it carry of what “social sector work” even is.
Ninety minutes passed easily. By the end, the words people used were connected, refreshed, curious, grateful, fulfilled. That is exactly what we built this space to do.
Chennai Social exists so that sector leaders can set down their titles and mandates and simply show up as themselves. This time, we think we got it right.
In the room this time: Alphia Anitha (Quest Alliance), Srividhya Prasanna (Aramporul), Ashwini (Involve), Roopavathi (Curious Korner), Praveena Gandhi (Goalkeep), Prabakaran (Amizth, founder of Moondram Ulagam), Karthik (Aram Thinai), Senthamil (Kalvi Maram Foundation), and Jeevan — along with Regila and Karunya from Vidhya Vidhai Foundation as co-hosts, and ourselves.
Next gathering: September, tentatively the fourth Friday.
30 August — Kindness Kitchen
Nine families arrived at our home for a Kindness Kitchen. Nirmala and Naresh, founders of the Kindness Kitchen movement in Auroville, led the day with us, and we were joined by the founder of Conscious Spaces Puducherry.
We cooked a Sunshine Fiesta — a vegan Mexican-inflected menu built from local ingredients and Indian technique. Turmeric-ginger root shot to welcome. Masala pappad nachos. Pumpkin-carrot soup. Burrito bowls. Sweet potato mousse. From children to adults, everyone chopped, prepped, cooked, and served — and cleaned as they went, so the kitchen never once felt overwhelmed.
Between prep and eating, we had an hour. Nirmala and Naresh led us through movement and dance — using bodies rather than words to talk about kindness, to each other and to the planet. We dreamt aloud about the kind of world we want to leave for our children. We got silly. We meditated together on bringing more kindness into everyday life.
We walked in as strangers and walked out as one family.
Through August — a four-week cooking experiment with nine families
What began as a passing thought at a library in July has become one of the warmest recurring circles of our month. Nine families from the Chennai Homeschooling Community have been meeting one Friday afternoon at a time, from 1 to 5 pm at Vidhai Learning Center in Chitlapakkam, to learn to cook together and document the process. We hope that, in time, this will grow into a cookbook.
The circle is cocreated, not delivered. Older children lead, and younger ones assist. Along the way they are picking up more than the recipe: knife safety, kitchen hygiene, how to share a small space, why you serve things hot. We rotate the roles each week, so cleaning, prepping, cooking, serving and documenting are all done by all of them. Somewhere alongside the food, the children are computing ratios, feeling dough consistency in their hands, and watching chemical reactions in a mixing bowl.
This first month has been deliberately experimental. As the group finds its rhythm we are weaving in gardening and math, and staying open to where the natural cadence takes us, whether that is caregiving, working with soil, or talking to farmers.
We are treating this as a pilot for our Community as Textbook research strand: learning that follows a real rhythm instead of a curriculum, built by the people doing it. A detailed write-up will be published soon.
One thing we changed our minds about
We are wondering whether our writings on the website are doing enough. Despite everything we have put out there, we keep noticing that our work needs more explanation, more breaking down. The Relationship Hackathon that received zero registrations gave us more confidence about this suspicion — a suspicion we had held for a while, that our work is not landing simply enough for people to know whether it is for them.
Out of this reflection, we have started a podcast series. We are trying to give voice to our work and our thought processes — what we are reflecting on, what we are advocating for, and also what is already working well in the city that we want to capture and share. We are hoping this will help us meet the people we work for, halfway.
We are also wondering if people might feel more comfortable experiencing us online first, before committing a Saturday morning to an in-person gathering. The podcast might be that first step.
How we’re standing
We are still not earning from this work. But we are actively exploring business collaborations that could support us to become financially stable — and to keep this work sustainable for the long haul. These monthly notes are one of the ways we stay honest with ourselves, and in touch with everyone who has helped bring us this far.
What is coming in September
Alongside our facilitation work, we are giving equal attention this month to our research side — scheduling meetings and activities that take us across the city, to meet the people who make it what it is.
- Sep 1 — First podcast interview with Aram Thinai. We will publish the podcast series once we have a few episodes recorded — hopefully by end of October, or Vijayadasami.
- Sep 9 — Second session of the Living as Learning series with IDG ICN. More information will be shared soon.
- Sep 12 — Meeting with Santha Sheela Nair, ex-IAS, founder of EPIC SS.
- Sep 13 — Farmers market visit organised by Aram Thinai. We are clubbing this with our Cookbook creation team — a chance to meet farmers in person and understand the link between place, food, and produce.
- Every Monday — Library visits at Prakrith Arivagam, Perungalathur.
- Every Friday — Cookbook meetups at Vidhai Learning Center, Chitlapakkam.
- Fourth Friday — Chennai Social.
→ Everything, with dates and details
One ask
Much of what we did this month was reach out to people whose work sits next to ours, inviting them into conversation. We would love your help with that.
If there is someone you think we should be talking to — a collaborator, a fellow-traveller, someone whose work would sharpen ours or ours theirs — reply and tell us who. An introduction is even better. A name and a reason is enough to start.
Inner Companion Foundation · Chennai · innercompanion.in