Stalin K. is a media and human rights activist, with 20 years experience pioneering new models of participatory media. He is a teacher, trainer and an internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker. He is one of India’s leading exponent of community radio, campaign design and community video. In 1991, when he was 23 years old, he co-founded a media and human rights organization based in Ahmedabad, India and was its Director till September 2008. He currently leads Video Volunteers, an international organization dedicated to empowering community voices by setting up media projects around the world. As part of Video Volunteers, he has enabled hundreds of disadvantaged to earn a sustainable livelihood through making media and sharing it locally and globally to drive concrete action. Stalin has made over a dozen documentaries and has received several national and international awards. His films, Lesser Humans and India Untouched, on the issue of caste and Untouchability, have galvanized international attention to Dalit issues. Lesser Humans won the Silver Conch at the Mumbai International Film Festival and a Special Mention at the Amnesty International Film Festival in Amsterdam in 1998, and the Excellence Award at the Earth Vision Film Festival, Tokyo. His other films include Gujarat – A Work in Progress, a film that documents the communal carnage in Gujarat in 2002; Our Water Our Future, a film on the Native American tribes of Wyoming, USA and their rights over their natural resource.

India Untouched won the Best Film at the One Billion Eye Film Festival in Chennai and the Best Documentary at the Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival in New York and two awards for Best Documentary at the Mumbai International Film Festival in 2007. It also won the Silver Dhow at the Zanzibar International Film Festival in 2009 Stalin is one of the leading voices to democratize India’s airwaves and has been in the forefront of the fight for communities’ right to own and run their own radio stations. He was part of a team that set up one of the first community radio projects in Kutch, India and part of the team that drafted much of the new Community Radio Policy in operation today. He is the President of the Community Radio Forum-India, a membership network of organizations and individuals committed to community radio in the country. He has designed more than 20 campaigns and events on various human rights issues including Cricket for Peace, Game4Change, Asia Social Forum and Making Caste Visible at UN World Conference Against Racism.