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 their quality of life.

Besides elearning centres in villages, the Village TV Trust has established the 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 a News Village.

The Academy hopes to move to the News Village campus by the Academic year 2025-26. The media 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.