Celebrating the spirit of change, innovation and social good, the annual Karmaveer Awards were presented recently to individuals and organisations in categories ranging from activism and education to volunteering, communications, rural development and healthcare. News Intervention Associate Editor Narender Yadav and renowned culinary historian Ashish Chopra are among the recipients of this year’s awards. Verghese Kurien known as father of the white revolution of India, was the first recipient of Karmaveer lifetime achievement award.
The Karmaveer Chakra Award is the global civilian honours given by the international confederation of NGO (iCONGO) in partnership with United Nations to the people across the globe for relentless courage. The award is a tribute to A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, 11th President of India, who had offered to be the ambassador for the awards and international volunteering olympiad.
Senior journalist Narender Yadav has been a relentless crusader towards minimizing the communication deficit and information gap among people living in socially disadvantaged situations. During the last one-decade, as a media professional, academician, media trainer, and child rights expert, he has been exploring and experimenting with myriad forms of communication to facilitate sustained dialogue amongst various stakeholders and thereby bridging the information gap, particularly in the far-flung areas of India. He was awarded the Rex Karmaveer Award and global fellowship.
Ashish Chopra, who has done remarkable work in preserving ancient Indian culinary traditions has been bestowed with Rex Karmaveer Puraskaar Jyoti Award. He has been tirelessly documenting and preserving India’s rich and diverse food traditions, for several decades now. An authority on tribal cuisine, during the last one decade, he has traversed more than 4 lakh km, experimenting and documenting cuisines, culture, and traditions of more than 250 tribes pan-India. He is of the firm belief that food, music and culture transcend all boundaries of caste, conflict, creed and religion. He believes that to respect food, tradition and culture is the best way to respect and understand humanity. His relentless spirit for food and travel has now led to a unique initiative to safeguard, promote, and teach our ancient culinary practices. For this purpose he has recently established India’s first School of Ancient Culinary Arts (SACA) in Dehradun. In his endeavor to preserve and share the traditional knowledge of culinary arts, he has been organising dedicated culinary tours, heritage food walks and curated food festivals specializing in lost and heritage cuisines. He is also the Culinary Advisor for popular channels like Travel XP and Food XP.
The Karmaveer Puraskaar Jyoti award were constituted in 2013 as a tribute to Jyoti Singh Pandey, the hero of the Nirbhaya incident.
According to Jeroninio Almeida, founder of the awards, “The Rex CONCLive was launched in 2006 and has been driving change with simple ideas for action ever since. A number of these ideas which were popularized at the Rex CONCLives have become huge movements today. Over the past few years, we have created a powerful momentum to address issues of pressing importance for the society at large. Ideas discussed at the REX forum over the years, have led to action for educational reforms, climate change, humane capitalism, dignity for people living with HIV etc.”
Over the past 15 years, International Confederation of NGOs (iCONGO) has created and founded The Joy of Giving, Right every Wrong, Swachh Bharat Mission, Karmaveer Awards, One Billion Rising andREX – Not just TALKS and Ideas for ACTION knowledge -sharing and wisdom-transfer CONCLiVE.