PEN is addressing media literacy and communication needs reflecting grassroots realities and issues. Engaging rural audiences in the process of information generation and understanding content consumption is an area of our interest with Development and Rural Journalism at the core of it. This is a platform to give impetus to Nation Building efforts at all levels by involving Women as equal partners at all levels of ideation, content creation, consumption, and scientific communication.
Our MEERA – Aadhi Abaadi, Poori Baat (Half Population, Full Voice) initiative has the specific purpose of having rural and women voices heard and mainstreaming gender discourses. Issue-based, participatory, and solution journalism remains intrinsic in this entire effort. For this, we are building a team of Meera Citizen Reporters who speak for themselves and for the issues that bother her. The articles section with NEWS and VIEWS are majorly in Hindi as our focus remains Rural India but exposure to Dialectical flavor and English is kept to cover the whole range and offer all choices.
We are also using research tools by bringing our PEN Journal to engage academic fraternity and professionals to think deeper about society, policies, and development while seeing the communication component in its entirety. We partner with different institutions to help build their communication culture, the philosophical framework of community work, undertake training, documentation, writing, filming, and research works specializing in development communication, communication strategies, and social campaigning.