About Us
We Don't Just Work in the Western Ghats. We Grow With It.
BeComing Earth Foundation (BCEF) is a community-rooted non-profit organisation working at the intersection of human–wildlife coexistence, ecological resilience, place-based learning, and community-designed environmental action. We believe that the present of conservation lies not only in protecting ecosystems, but in strengthening the relationships between people, place, and the more-than-human world.
Our work grows from a simple belief: communities are not beneficiaries of conservation they are its co-creators.
Today, BCEF works through programmes that bring together ecological research, education, culture, community dialogue, youth leadership, innovation, and collaborative action across the human–wildlife interaction landscapes of the Western Ghats.
Our Journey
From a People's Movement to a Commons Foundation
Every organisation begins with a question.
Ours began with a simple one:
What if conservation could be designed with communities instead of for communities?
In 2020, Voice of the Western Ghats emerged as a grassroots people's movement led by young environmentalists, community members, and volunteers who wanted to respond differently to the growing ecological and social challenges across the Western Ghats.
What started as a volunteer-led movement soon became much more than conservation. It evolved into a space for learning, dialogue, youth leadership, storytelling, research, innovation, and collective action rooted in the landscapes where people and wildlife share space.
Over the years, we realised that creating lasting change required more than individual projects. It required an organisation capable of nurturing knowledge, relationships, resources, and community leadership over generations.
That journey led to the formation of BeComing Earth Foundation.
Today, Voice of the Western Ghats continues as BCEF's flagship implementation programme, while the Foundation provides the long-term structure to grow place-based conservation, ecological learning, and community-led innovation across the Western Ghats.
Our story is still unfolding.
Journey
key milestones.
2020–2021
Voice of the Western Ghats Begins
A grassroots people's movement emerges in the Western Ghats, bringing together young people, local communities, and environmental practitioners around conservation, coexistence, and community action
2021–2024
Learning, Listening & Building
The movement expands through community engagement, youth leadership, ecological education, cultural initiatives, environmental advocacy, and place-based experimentation across human–wildlife interaction landscapes.
2025
BeComing Earth Foundation is Established
To create long-term institutional support for the movement, BeComing Earth Foundation (BCEF) is registered as a non-profit organisation, providing a decentralised structure for programmes, knowledge, and community partnerships to grow sustainably.
Today
Growing a Commons for Coexistence
Voice of the Western Ghats continues as BCEF's flagship programme, advancing community-designed conservation, human–wildlife coexistence, ecological learning, and collaborative action across the Western Ghats.
At the same time, BCEF is building a broader ecosystem through Non-Zero, Circula, Project Kenjiga, and new place-based initiatives that strengthen not only conservation projects but also the people, organisations, and knowledge systems that make long-term coexistence possible.
We imagine a future and present where communities, wildlife, forests, rivers, and institutions do not exist in opposition, but in relationship.
A future and present where conservation is rooted in trust rather than extraction, learning rather than certainty, and collaboration rather than hierarchy.
Because becoming is not a destination.
It is a continuous practice of learning how to live well together on Earth.