“I got to know of the Arkleton Trust in the year 1993. An advertisement announcing fellowships appeared in the magazine Economist. A friend saw the announcement in Hong Kong, sent a cutting of this through snail mail – reaching me many weeks later. Subsequently I applied for the Bernard Conyer’s fellowship and was awarded this 1995. At that time I was a young designer who had risked stepping into the boundaries of development work, designing media for non literate communities. What the fellowship did for me was many fold. It was for a first recognition by an internal community who saw potential in what I was saying. The grant helped me to consolidate and disseminate my work to a larger local and national audience. Aside from this what I also gained was professional confidence. People responded to what I was saying about communication needs for the marginalized communities and I was able to slowly convince development teams that design of media is an important part of any development programme and can no longer be kept on the fringe. I have always believed that the Arkleton Trust had a huge role in the way I grew professionally. It gave me a world view, further, it introduced me to the International Rural Network Community in 2004, where I was able to interact and learn and share at larger platforms.”
Lakshmi Murthy