The Team

An inborn ardour for travel made her take up a course in Travel and Tourism after her post graduation. After an eight year stint with various reputed airline companies and travel agencies, this programme of study helped her to set up her very own travel agency, YATRA, in Coonoor. The very same passion as well made her frequently tour not only through the length and breadth of this country, but also abroad, and she is known to have frequented African, European and South East Asian countries.

Travel broadens a person’s outlook and makes one take a sympathetic view of the world around, and very soon she developed a liking for the wilds and God’s creatures both great and small that dwell therein, an affection which made her take up nature photography in earnest. The very same fondness soon made her to take up campaigning for environmental issues, and this she does effectively through various social media platforms ; Adopt a Forest, a group involved in afforesting the Hills, and the Wynter-Blyth association, working towards setting up butterfly gardens in schools and developing a keen interest in nature in young minds ; being a few.

One of the very small number of unassuming individuals who possess compassion both for humanity and the wilderness, Coonoor town from 2014 onwards, witnessed her founding and heading the movement, ‘Clean Coonoor,’ an organisation committed to clean up activities in and around this town, and to serve as a bridge of communication between the municipal authorities and the general populace. The organisation became a registered public charitable trust of which she functions as the managing trustee. Under her able leadership the organisation has achieved great milestones such as clearing the surface drainage of the town from blockages, de-silting of the Coonoor River, restoration of the Yedapalli marshlands, landscaping the municipal dump and turning the same into a waste processing centre.

Her links with corporates such as the United Planter’s Association of South India (UPASI),  the Tamil Nadu Tea Plantation Corporation Limited (TANTEA) and others, have facilitated much in mobilising much needed volunteers and acquire sponsorships for the many social awareness programmes, cleanup drives, tree planting and other environment related activities that the town of Coonoor has witnessed. On the social platform, her Facebook Group named Coonoorian is a model of all its kind, where issues related to this district are widely discussed. 

Her community oriented ventures do not confine themselves to this town alone, for she only too willingly lends a helping hand to other organisations in Ooty and Kotagiri.

A nature lover who was conquered by the charms of these hills he decided to make Coonoor as his hometown. After a stint as a clinician, he was posted in an administrative capacity as a deputy director incharge of the district’s tuberculosis control  programme, a post which he held for nearly 13 years.

Having opted for early retirement he now devotes his time to issues connected with the environment, sanitation and hygiene. 

His experience as an administrator and a public health person has been of great help in planning and running the Mixed Stream Solid Waste Processing Unit managed by Clean Coonoor. His other passion is documenting the changing landscape and scenario of these hills since the advent of the British, and this hobby has helped a bit in the organisation’s eco-restoration drives.

Prasanna as he is otherwise called, devotes his leisure to the cause of social uplift. This he does by mobilising volunteers from amongst the local populace for the many activities undertaken by Clean Coonoor. He is a staunch advocate of the maxim of leading by example, and unflinchingly takes upon any task however arduous it may seem.