Jungle and Jeevan Fellowship
2026

The Jungle and Jeevan Fellowship was developed in collaboration with Dasra and the Climate Narrative Hub as part of the Stories of Co-existence initiative.

The fellowship brought together 12 young women from communities living in and around the Panna landscape in Madhya Pradesh to document stories of human–wildlife coexistence through multimedia storytelling.

Conversations around wildlife often focus on conflict - crop loss, damaged property, or encounters between people and animals. While these stories are important, they rarely capture the full picture. Missing from these narratives are the voices of the women who live closest to forests and wildlife, whose everyday lives are deeply intertwined with these shared landscapes.

The fellowship was designed to address this gap by strengthening the capacities of young women to document stories from within their own communities.

Building on Chambal Academy's Rural Mobile Journalism (RMOJO) curriculum, fellows received training in mobile journalism, photography, videography, ethical reporting, interviewing, and multimedia storytelling. Alongside these technical skills, they engaged with themes of biodiversity, conservation, climate, and human–wildlife coexistence through online sessions, field immersion, and discussions with subject experts.

Fellows documented stories that explored everyday experiences of adaptation, care, labour, mobility, safety, and ecological knowledge, offering a more nuanced understanding of coexistence beyond dominant narratives of conflict.

At A Glance

Partners: Dasra and Climate Narrative Hub
Participants: 12 young women
Geography: Panna district, Madhya Pradesh
Theme: Human–Wildlife Coexistence