Thoughtshop Foundation’s debut workshop for Sundarban Tramjatra 2025
Inside the modest office of the Thoughtshop Foundation in Kolkata, the air hums with quiet energy. Papers are spread out on the floor, marker pens uncapped, and laughter breaks out now and then between deep silences of planning. A circle of youth trainers - Uma Singh, Punam Sadhukha, Pranay Dolai, Azharuddin Sk, Moumita Das, Shampa Halder and more - are gathered around, brainstorming the final flow of a workshop they will soon lead as part of Sundarban Tramjatra in Kolkata.
Santayan briefing the instructions for the workshop to the youth trainers
This is the first time the Foundation is participating in Tramjatra, and their focus is both urgent and timeless — biodiversity, and the importance of living together with all species. Santayan Sengupta, a designer trained at NID and one of the directors of the Thoughshop Foundation, facilitated the team with a mix of ease and intent. He has been with the foundation since 2000. “The organisation itself began in 1994,” he says. “Our work primarily focuses on youth empowerment. We work through independent but interconnected youth organisations rooted in different locations — from the urban slums of Kolkata to Namkhana in the Sundarbans.” The workshop, titled around the idea of “connected life,” is the Foundation’s first public conversation about the environment and climate change. “Until now, our focus has been largely on issues like child rights and gender justice,” Santayan explains. “But when you’re working with communities in the Sundarbans — places that have faced repeated cyclones and displacement — you cannot ignore the environment. This is our entry point. Here, the idea is to provoke reflection through role-play that speaks to the deeply entangled lives humans share with other species.
Youth trainers at Thoughtshop Foundation plan the workshop through collective discussion
Santayan discussing the workshop activity
For Thoughtshop Foundation, this is not just a new theme — it is a natural extension of their philosophy. “Human life is inseparable from other forms of life,” Santayan says. For communities like those in Namkhana, whose everyday life is shaped by mangroves, rivers, and tides, the message of this workshop is not abstract — it’s lived. It’s etched into memory by saltwater, storm winds, and silent species that surround them.
And now, with Sundarban Tramjatra as its vehicle, Thoughtshop Foundation prepares to take these stories — of survival, connection, and quiet resistance — to the city, where they can travel slowly, stopping just long enough for someone to listen.
