Ambika Raja, who has just received the second NWMI Fellowship, has not allowed a debilitating accident that left her wheelchair-bound at a very young age to stand in the way of pursuing Journalism.
According to a release Ambika's application served as an important reminder of the often-forgotten fact that while social identity is a critical aspect of diversity, there are other disadvantaged groups who need to be kept in mind while promoting better representation of different sections of society in the media as well as other fields of work.
The NWMI fellowship fund is unique in that it is raised through voluntary contributions from network members themselves, who share their own limited resources as an act of solidarity with fellow women journalists.
The fellowship was spontaneously launched last year after a young Adivasi journalist working in a remote, economically backward district of Odisha state, had to use multiple forms of transport (including a boat) to arrive in Hyderabad and attend the national network meeting there in November 2016. Jayanti was the first recipient of the fellowship and continues to be associated with the network: at the national network meeting in Chennai in January 2018, when participants heard more about her experiences and struggles, several of them pledged varying amounts of money to enable us to buy her a laptop - and she soon became the proud owner of one.
For more details contact Ammu Joseph at
