ABOUT

Meet Our Knowledge Partners

Collaborative relationships are at the heart of the Woman Farmer Project. Meet the partners who helped support the fellowship, shape priorities, and ensure contextual accuracy in our storytelling.

TEAM LOCAVORE

As part of the fifth edition of Central Indian Landscape Symposium organised by NCCI in Mukki, Kanha, different local vendors and organisations—such as PashooPakshee, as pictured here—display their products at the CILS Haat. Photo by Bhumika Yadav.

The aim of the Woman Farmer Project is to go beyond just producing stories; it seeks to build a practical model for ethical collaboration in storytelling. From supporting young women storytellers to collaborating with grassroots organisations for meaningful engagement, and exploring how community-rooted distribution can change the afterlife and usefulness of climate stories, our partnerships with organisations and experts from various fields helped center communities, accountability, and long-term relationships.

Organisations

Within each fellowship region, The Locavore collaborated with organisations that have worked in these geographies across intersectional issues of food security and sovereignty, livelihoods, ecology, and environmental and climate concerns.

These partners helped us shape priorities based on lived realities and local concerns, facilitate ethical access rooted in trust, support cultural mediation and contextual accuracy, and ensure stories return to the respective communities in meaningful ways.

Meghalaya | The North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS)

Based out of Shillong, Meghalaya, the North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS) is a platform dedicated to revitalising, safeguarding, and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems. NESFAS works closely with Indigenous communities in North East India, recognising and emphasising the role of women as guardians of biodiversity, food, land, people, and nutrition.

Read more about NESFAS and explore their work here.

Madhya Pradesh | The Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI)

The Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI) is a collaborative platform working across the Central Indian Highlands to conserve biodiversity, strengthen livelihoods, and support sustainable development. Grounded in inclusive participation, it brings together grassroots organisations, researchers, and practitioners to collectively shape knowledge and action based on on-ground realities.

Read more about NCCI and explore their work here.

Tamil Nadu | Dakshin Foundation

Dakshin Foundation is a Bengaluru-based non-profit working to inform and catalyse conservation and natural resource management in India’s coastal and marine ecosystems. It supports sustainable livelihoods, social development, and environmental justice by strengthening community participation in conservation and decision-making across mainland coasts, the Lakshadweep Islands, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Read more about Dakshin Foundation.

The Collaboratives

The Woman Farmer Project is part of a global initiative by the Doc Society Climate Story Unit, called ‘The Collaboratives’, bringing leading cultural organisations, storytellers, and community networks from India, Kenya, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil to work together in intentional partnership and explore new models for climate storytelling. Through the year, each country’s team will develop and test collaboration models that strengthen climate narratives while sharing learnings across regions.

Know more here.

Experts

In preparation for the storytellers’ time on the ground, The Locavore hosted mentorship sessions with five experts across different fields. Each session allowed the attendees to pause and rethink the many journalistic and storytelling processes, have meaningful discussions, and attempt to come up with solutions for the challenges they might encounter on ground.

Harsha Vadlamani is an independent photojournalist and National Geographic Explorer whose current work explores food systems, environment, migration, and health, grounded in long-term engagement with rural and indigenous communities across India.

His work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, GEO, Al Jazeera, The Economist, The Guardian, Le Monde, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Rest of World and Scientific American, among many others. In 2020, Harsha documented three years of the Indian farmers’ protest through portraits and interviews. His project ‘Heavy Lies the Grain,’ investigates the impact of decades of intense monocropping on Punjab’s agriculture, water resources, health and farm debt. See more of  his work here.

Shreya Raman is an independent journalist reporting on climate, labour, and public policy.

Over the last nine years, Shreya has reported extensively on issues of gender, labour, health, and climate. She has previously worked as a journalist for Behanbox, IndiaSpend, and Mirror Now. She is the recipient of the Laadli Media Award for Gender Sensitivity and the Likho Award for Excellence in Media. Her work has appeared in publications such as Foreign Policy, The Fuller Project, Nikkei Asia, Scroll.in, Article 14, and The Third Pole. 

Shreya’s story focusing on fisherwomen’s fight against privatisation of ports in Maharashtra can be read here, and her reportage on fisherfolk’s battle to save coastal land can be read here. You can also read more of her work here. 

Laxmi Murthy heads the Hri Institute for Southasian Research and Exchange, and conducts research and training on gender, freedom of expression, and journalists’ rights.

Laxmi is also a contributing editor with Himal Southasian and has worked with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ).  She is engaged in feminist archival projects, most notably with feminist publisher Zubaan, and media research with several peoples’ networks, including sex workers’ collectives. Laxmi has been associated with the autonomous women’s movement and civil rights movement in India since the mid-1980s. She is one of the founder-members of the Network of Women in Media, India, a forum for women media professionals. She is also co-founder editor of the Free Speech Collective, a platform for journalists and free-speech advocates.

Karthik Madhavapeddi is the Managing Editor at IndiaSpend.

Over the last decade, Karthik has led journalism projects on air pollution, crime, public health, and fact-checking. His projects have received national and international awards, including the Data Journalism Award 2019 by the Global Editors Network. You can read IndiaSpend’s work on climate and data here and here. You can also read their reporting on gender through numbers here.

Mohar (they/them) is an award-winning independent reporter based in Mumbai and Bengaluru.

Mohar covers development, public policy, climate change, and the environment through the lens of human rights. Their work has been published in New Lines Magazine, Undark, Evening Standard, Frontline, Newslaundry, Article 14, The Times of India, and Scroll.in, among others.

They have also received two Ramnath Goenka Awards for Excellence in Journalism, one Shriram Sanlam Award for Excellence in Financial Journalism, and attained third place at the PII-ICRC awards.  You can read Mohar’s recent reportage on displacement of communities in Madhya Pradesh here and you can read their work on India’s greenwashing parks here. You can also read more of their work here.

Doc Society Climate Story Fund supports compelling independent media storytelling and impact strategies from around the world that can help audiences envision the just transition, and activate them to make these visions a reality.

This Beyond the Plate is part of the Woman Farmer Project, a multimedia storytelling initiative led by The Locavore in partnership with the Doc Society Climate Story Unit. It aims to build a roadmap for successful collaborations between storytellers, grassroots organisations, and community distribution networks across India.