After over 20 hours of travelling, I arrived in Kerala to start my leadership project with CraftHER. Before this point, I had only anxiety and anticipation; I had briefings on what to expect, but I still had no real idea what I was getting myself into.
It was with much surprise that I was greeted with a party bus and taken to dinner with the wonderful programme manager, Preetha Matthews. Far from the stoic, serious image I had built in my head, I was surrounded by empowered women who understood that strength and sensitivity are one and the same. The warmth with which I was greeted set the precedent: CraftHER teaches real leadership - the kind that involves empathy, collaboration, humility and, of course, good food.
Sounds great, but what have we actually done?
Retelling the story of this week might sound like voluntourism to some. Yes, we had good food and visited beautiful places. But it was the connections we began building with Kerala that mattered most.
On day two, we visited Save the Loom, and it was here that I first grasped the cultural weight the crafting community carries. The organisation was founded in response to a flood that destroyed the looms rural women relied on for income. What began as a recovery project has since grown into something much larger. We were given a short session on weaving, and I left with a woven bookmark and a much sharper sense of how fragile, and how vital, this kind of livelihood is.
The following day brought back-to-back sessions on leadership, personal branding, and social entrepreneurship, closing with presentations to the group. Of everything we covered, the session on business scaling stuck with me most. I've always been sceptical of growth and profit as the default goals of an organisation, and this session gave that scepticism a name: doughnut economics. The model argues that growth alone shouldn't be the target; the goal is meeting human needs and sustaining wellbeing without needlessly damaging the environment along the way. Critics call it impractical, and the roadmap for adopting it may well need refining. But it reframed a question I hadn't thought to ask properly before: if growth is the primary metric of success, there is no point at which success has actually been reached. A business grounded in a clear set of values, and a clear sense of who it exists to serve, seems like a far more sustainable model - one with an actual finish line, rather than an infinite chase.
It struck me, thinking back to Save the Loom, that this is exactly the model in practice: an organisation that started with a specific need, i.e., replacing lost looms, rather than a growth target, and that has scaled only as far as the need required. Perhaps that's the real test of doughnut economics, not the theory but organisations like this one already living it.
Closing Reflections
Overall, this first week has introduced me to an entirely new community in Kerala. Asha, Preetha, and Durga have built a programme that teaches leadership in a way the world badly needs: not the loudest-voice-in-the-room kind, but something quieter and sturdier. It has already pushed me to reconsider my own role here, particularly through my consulting and individual projects.
The clearest lesson, though, was one I didn't recognise until I sat down to write this: that first night on the party bus, being welcomed with warmth rather than a formal briefing, was itself the leadership lesson. Power isn't a finite resource to be hoarded to survive. It's a gift within all of us. A leader is simply someone who passes the mic to each voice, and ensures everyone is heard.