Madhuri Chauhan- Uttar Pradesh

Madhuri Chauhan primarily reports on issues related to gender, women’s rights, and government programmes.

Madhuri Chauhan has been a leader since a young age. When her father died, her mother faced stigma, thanks to superstitious beliefs that she had caused the death. As her mother struggled, Madhuri found ways to support the family. She completed her education and became a teacher, despite the discrimination she faced because she was a girl. Her success made her a role model for other girls, and she quickly became the community’s leading activist for women’s rights. She reports for VV with the aim to do away with superstitions and discrimination. Madhuri believes that the media cannot always glorify the government. She has used journalism to reveal areas in which the government has failed to implement social welfare programmes. Her reporting is pioneering a new field for her fellow community members: social-impact, citizen-based journalism. She hopes to encourage others to change regressive cultural norms and systems through community media.

About the Partnership: The Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) Programme and Video Volunteers have come together to create the Community Correspondents Network. The videos generated by the network will be able to highlight voices from the margins, providing skills to social communicators to provide advocacy tools to community based organizations.