DDS community media trust bags UGC-ECE national award.

Hyderabad, Apr 17 (UNI) The Deccan Development Society (DDS) Community Media Trust, a group of women farmer-filmmakers from Pastapur Village in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh, won the University Grants Commission-Consortium of Educational Communication (UGC-CEC) National Award for the Best Educational Video Film.

In a nationwide competition which received 246 entries, from some of the best known short filmmakers and the academia from across the Indian universities, the group of rural women has won two awards, according to a release here today.

The DDS Community Media Trust, a group of dalit women, most of them non-literate has thus made history by winning a prestigious national award. This is for the first time in India that a rural group of women farmers has won such an honour.

The UGC-CEC is an inter-university body which promotes educational television for Indian universities by running an educational TV channel called Countrywide Classroom. The UGC-CEC also organiser an educational video competition every year, which is open to all short filmmakers in the country.

The 2006 competition was the 18th Competition held by the UGC and it was judged by a national jury consisting of eminent filmmakers and educationists.

DDS is a two-decade old grassroots organisation working in about 75 villages with women's Sanghams (voluntary village level associations of the poor) in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh.

The 5000 women members of the Society represent the poorest of the poor in their village communities, the release added.

UNI