About Charkha

Charkha Development Communication Network was established in year 1994 by Mr. Sanjoy Ghose in New Delhi. Mr. Ghose was born on 7^th December 1959 in Nagpur city of Maharashtra. In 1995, a non-governmental organization ‘Unnati’, with the help of other organization and prominent activists and has started Charkha in Gujarat. Now it is working in five states- Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Jharkhand. In Delhi and Gujarat, it is registered as a charitable trust and voluntary organization.

Aim

To develop faith and positive attitude among people towards developmental efforts and social change.

Strategy

Encouraging document developmental efforts in mainstream media by capacity building of development practitioners and motivation to journalists and publicity of the same.

Objectives

· To motivate positive writings by grass root workers for developmental issues in mainstream newspapers of Gujarat.

· To develop writing skills of social workers and capacity building of them for regular write-ups of their experiences during continuous people centered development process.

· To established contacts and communication between NGOs and media.

· To sensitized people for active participation in local developmental efforts.

Why it is named Charkha?

‘Charkha’ means ‘Spinning Wheel’ of Ghandhi Bapu symbolizes continuity. It gives message of simplicity and self-dependency. Mr. Sanjoy Ghose, founder of Charkha got impulse from these values to select the name Charkha.

Charkha- the effort to strengthen positive developmental communication

We are happy to start the website of Charkha in front of you which is working for last 13 years in developmental communication area.

Charkha is a decent effort to bring faith of people in developmental works. Charkha is a development communication network and is working in Gujarat since 1995 as a non-governmental organization. It is doing efforts in Gujarat by highlighting developmental efforts in more than 40 mainstream newspapers, periodicals and television channels. Instead of exploring any organization or a person, Charkha is doing the efforts to highlight the developmental issues.

Through the website, we acquainted you with the activities of Charkha and developmental issues and efforts. This will also speed up the aim of the Charkha that is positive write-ups with self-opinion about key issues and noteworthy developmental efforts.

The website invites voluntary organization and workers of Gujarat to share their positive developmental experiences. Charkha will do efforts to help and give direction to representatives of mainstream newspapers and television channels for encouraging developmental journalism.

The need to explore positive attitude

Why we are hesitating to accept our nation’s capacity and achievements? We are the residents of a great country. Our nation has many-many success stories that surprise everybody but still we are not accepting the same. We are on the top of the world in milk production. We are also first in Remote Sensing Satellite- satellite, which can examine things from distance. We are on second position for grain crops. We have lakhs of achievements like these but our communication network shows only bad news and fruitless stories.

Once I was in Telaviv (Israel). An Israelian was reading newspaper. Bomb-blast, attack and deaths were happened somewhere in Israel yesterday, but there was a photo of a Yehudi on the front page of the newspaper who has developed his barren land into the fruit garden and grain deposits. By reading this kind of positive article everybody gets motivated. The news of murder, bomb-blast and deaths were inside the newspaper among other news. But in India we use to read this type of news on the front page.

- Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Former President

(Photo curtsey: www.abdulkalam.com)