In line with the approach of both funding agencies in enabling the empowerment of rural and marginalized communities, especially women, through a collaborative approach, this project is envisaged as a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model – with Media Lab Asia, Byrraju Foundation, and other potential knowledge partner agencies in the development sector, corporate sector and community as partners in setting up the Community TV centers.

The knowledge partners contribute to the project in capacity building of the team Project Chetana, sponsoring collaborative productions, and in promoting the brand value.

Video Volunteers:
Video Volunteers is 501c3 non-profit based in New York City, working to create a sustainable global ‘community media network’, a kind of CNN or BBC for the one billion people living on less than two dollars a day. It envisions an alternative media landscape in which tens of thousands of people around the world, living in slums and villages, are producing high quality video content that brings awareness to communities and empowers members to take action. This media is shown locally to accelerate change, while also being distributed through the mainstream media. The low cost of cameras and editing equipment, and the explosion of cable and internet distribution, have already made this technologically possible.

Video Volunteers devise models of sustainable, locally owned media, and devise training programs that give communities the journalism, critical thinking and creative skills to run them. The result is communities, especially illiterate ones, that are empowered with a voice and platforms to dialog and solve problems; new creative content that shows the rest of the world how the world appears to its poorest citizens; and proven ideas for bringing the poorest of the poor across the digital divide.

One of Video Volunteers’ strategies for creating a media industry at the base of the pyramid is the community video model, an innovative concept of community media that was developed by Stalin K and Jessica Mayberry in 2006. Currently there are 8 Community Video Units (CVUs) across India in six states, ranging from the largest slum in Asia to the most remote tribal regions of the country. Each CVU is started and funded by a local NGO that has chosen to invest in the vision of creating a ‘Global Social Media Network.’ Each CVU is comprised of 6-10 people from the surrounding slums and villages who are trained as producers. About every 6 weeks these producers, based on a topic decided by the community, produces a video that is seen via wide screen projectors. About 150-400 people come each night to these screenings and discussions. In areas where most cannot read or write video is the perfect way to reach communities and raise awareness on key issues like health, human rights, child marriage, water access and livelihood while inspiring the community to think about these issues and bring about change through action. Through these CVU’s Video Volunteers empowers communities to lead, connect and change, to not only better their lives but in doing so make this world a better place for all of us. http://www.videovolunteers.org

Andhra Pradesh Mahila Samatha Society (APMSS):
Andhra Pradesh Mahila Samatha Society is a part of the Mahila Samakhya Programme of Government of India under department of Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development. The programme was launched in the State during the year 1993 with Medak & Mahaboobnagar districts initially and presently extended to 9 districts through phase wise expansion.

The principle objective of the programme is Education for Empowerment of Women. It is sought to be achieved through village women’s collectives - the sanghams. The core areas focused in the process of facilitating empowerment are education, health, women in governance, natural resource and asset building and social and gender Equity Issues.
http://www.apmss.org

Marketplace Literacy Project
The Marketplace Literacy Project, Illinois, USA (www.marketplaceliteracy.org), in concert with the Subsistence Marketplaces Initiative, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA, (http://www.business.illinois.edu/subsistence ), LEARN (Livelihood Education and Research Network), Chennai, India, and SDV Educational Trust, Chennai, India, has developed a unique consumer and entrepreneurial literacy program for low-literate, low income individuals. Previous work has focused on at least two key elements that individuals living in subsistence need to participate in marketplaces, financial resources (e.g., microfinancing) and market access. We focus on a third key element, marketplace literacy. Research aimed at understanding life circumstances and marketplaces in subsistence contexts in urban and rural parts of South India provided the basis for developing a consumer and entrepreneurial literacy educational program which assumes that our audience cannot read or write.

This program uses the “know-why” or an understanding of marketplaces as a basis for the know-how of being an informed buyer or seller. Despite the difficulties with abstract thinking that low-literate individuals may experience, we enable deeper understanding of marketplaces by leveraging the social skills that participants bring to the program and relating educational content back to their lived experiences. We use a variety of methods such as picture sorting, simulated shopping, and role plays. We believe such understanding can enable individuals to place themselves on a path to lifelong learning. We innovate in terms of the content as well as the delivery method, covering concepts using picture sortings, role plays, and so on, that tap into people's lived experiences (http://www.business.uiuc.edu/~madhuv/mlp.ppt). Topics covered range from consumer skills to choosing an enterprise to start and being customer oriented.

We documented our approach in a recently released book "Enabling Consumer and Entrepreneurial Literacy in Subsistence Marketplaces” by Springer in an education series in alliance with UNESCO (http://www.springer.com/education/book/978-1-4020-5768-7 ). This book describes research on low-literate, poor buyers and sellers in subsistence marketplaces, the consequent development of our innovative marketplace literacy educational program that enables consumer and entrepreneurial literacy, and implications of the research and the educational program for business, education, and social enterprise.
Following extensive piloting and assessment, the program is being scaled through large social enterprises with plans for implementation in other countries and contexts (www.marketplaceliteracy.org). For example, in the state of Andhra Pradesh we are working with the Byrraju Foundation to reach 200 villages and 50,000 families through community-based television programs. We are working with the Microcredit Foundation of India in Tamil Nadu to enable video based marketplace literacy education to microentrepreneurs. We are also in discussions with several corporations and non-profits on potential collaborations. We can scale in a variety of ways, by training trainers or by putting the program on an electronic platform. Our program can be used by non-profit organizations as well as businesses working with the urban and rural poor as customers or as suppliers or partners in the value chain. We can customize our program content to different degrees of depth and breadth (e.g., health-related consumer literacy, broader business education, agricultural literacy)