Mangaluru: Villages are India’s lifeline and Village TV Trust® has embarked on a daunting mission of dissemination of news from the 6 lakh plus villages of India and creating 1.4 million jobs over time, with the patronage of Spearhead Media, a premier Media House of Karnataka.
The Trust has started its nationally enabling journey from Karnataka its home state. Its 27,000 villages are home to 67% of its population of 6.1 crores. They support the rest of us with their Traditional Knowledge, Medicine, Craft and Food production. They have so much to share – their knowledge, traditions, achievements, and struggles, but not the means to do so. It is important that all of this must reach the world, for the world to reach out to them. Village TV Trust hopes to build this communication bridge to enhance its quality of life.
Set up by public-spirited people of repute in Mangaluru – Karnataka, the Village TV Trust is a People’s Trust that the people trust. It is dedicated to empowering rural youth by providing them with meaningful livelihood possibilities through learning and earning opportunities in the digital media space to help bridge the rural-urban divide.
While mass communication technology has crowdfunded creativity, and increased competition for eyeballs, it has also created sustained demand for Media skills all over the world, and no less in India, at both the individual and the corporate level.
Spearhead Academy
In pursuance of this demand for media skills, and the infinite possibilities these skills can create for India’s youth, the Village TV Trust has set up an eLearning centre in Hosangady in Belthangady Taluk, as also, established Spearhead Academy to teach and develop Media Skills in India’s youth especially rural youth through short-term value add courses in the Media Space and a full-fledged, practice-oriented Mangalore University-affiliated 4-year undergraduate degree, B Sc in Media Studies (Honors) (proposed) under the New Education Policy of the Govt. of India.
This undergraduate degree course will commence from the academic year 2023-24 (Next year). It will be unique as its students will earn a stipend from day one of their course under the Academy’s “earn while you learn” scheme. Both these initiatives (eLearning Centres and Spearhead Academy) are in keeping with the Trust’s objectives.
The Academy has already commenced its operations by leasing classrooms, offices and labs at Sandesha campus, Mangalore on a temporary basis. The Academy has already appointed Dr John D’Silva as Administrator (Former Vice-Principal, St. Aloysius College, Mangaluru), Mr Srinivasa Pejathaya as Principal (Former Group Editor of Spearhead Media Private Limited, Mangaluru and Coordinator of PG Journalism of Alva’s College, Moodubidire) and Mr Roshan Honest Raj A as Vice Principal (Former lecturer at Loyola College, Bannerghatta, Bengaluru).
Simultaneously, the Academy has started building a team of academicians and administrative staff is already offering short-term courses and has initiated the affiliation process with Mangalore University. It has also begun the process of identifying suitable land for lease from the Govt. of Karnataka to establish its own campus – we prefer to call it “News Village”.
The Academy hopes to move to its ‘News Village’ campus by the Academic year 2025-26. The News Village envisages best-in-class news labs, auditoriums, audio and video studios, an amphitheatre, a model village, production facilities, a community and online radio station, digital and social media portals, channels and more.
It will be a full-fledged media campus, the first of its kind that will set out to teach and develop mainly rural youth and deserves encouragement. A budget of Rs: 10 Crores has been earmarked for this.
It is envisaged as a crowd-funded campus and donations to the Trust are open to all, and especially those with the belief that ethical media professionals and entrepreneurs are the need of the hour. All donations are exempt from Income Tax under Sec 80G of the Income Tax Act.
The Donations can be made directly to the Trust through the Donation page at https://milaap.org/ (click the link to go directly to the Village Donation Page).
