Catalyst House

Ahmedabad Day 1 – A Gandhi Traveler’s Journal

[Editor’s note: Stephanie Brown was a participant of this year’s tour, which I helped to organize. She has been journaling at her ShutterFly photo blog where she has posted many more images that she and her father Jerry took]

The Gandhi Legacy tour is a J-term course option at Salisbury University in Maryland.  One of our tour members, Anthony, attended as a SU graduate student last year and came back this year to bring his fiancé, Katie.  Half seriously they started talking about getting married at the Sabarmati Ashram.  Arun caught wind of it and started making the preparations including re-writing the vows that his Grandfather once used to be relevant to the times.  Anthony and Katie picked out wedding clothes during a market excursion in Kolhapur and the wedding was planned to take place shortly after we arrived at the ashram.  It was a beautiful, simple ceremony.

Aerial view of Ahmedabad on Sabarmati River

Ahmedabad Day 1

Our first train experience was an overnight ride from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.  I thought this might be a good opportunity to get caught up with journaling and photo edits but since we did not board until after 10pm it was lights out after we settled in.  I slept remarkably well in my very hard upper berth and was pretty well rested when we arrived just before 7am.  (Read more…)


Cal-Earth Apprentices Arrive in Kolhapur India

Whitey at Cal-Earth

Excerpt from Whitey Flagg’s ShelterSpace blog

In September I returned to Southern California to begin my long-term apprenticeship at Cal-Earth.

– See also: Amazing SuperAdobe

I learned Super-adobe and many different types of foundations, flooring, plastering, waterproofing, and much more. I have been studying Permaculture for some time but was also able to participate in a PDC course and finally receive my certificate. As a bonus, this course ended with an unexpected visit from Geoff and Nadia Lawton who gave a one day lecture on “Greening the Mojave Desert”.

While I was teaching a workshop on how to build an emergency sandbag shelter, we received a visit from Lynnea Bylund of Catalyst House, a strategic alliance  consultancy, and her guest, Tushar Gandhi, great grandson of the Mahatma. Lynnea and Tushar sit on the Board of Gandhi Worldwide Education Institute, a benefactor of the AVANI Organization, which provides child labor rescue and women’s advocacy in India. Together, the two organizations are building a residence for children and an educational facility near the town of Kolhapur.

(Read more…)


Catalyst House