AN INVITATION TO NOMINATE A DESERVING CANDIDATE FOR THE CHINGARI AWARD, 2008.

Download the nomination form here. (Word format.)
The Chingari Award Jury

27th January 2008, Bhopal/New Delhi

We extend an invitation for rural Indian women nominees for the world's first Award for women fighting against corporate crimes. The Chingari Award for Women Against Corporate Crime annually recognizes one rural Indian woman who is working along with her community, at great personal risk and hardship, to expose and fight human rights excesses of corporations.

BACKGROUND TO THE CHINGARI AWARD

The Chingari Award for Women Against Corporate Crime is a very unique award set up by two Bhopali activist women from the Goldman Prize (also known as Alternate Nobel Prize for Environment) money that they won in 2004.

Inspired by their own slogan – "We are Flames, not Flowers" – two Bhopali women survivors from the 1984 gas disaster instituted the Chingari (Embers) Award for Women Against Corporate Crime. The Award, which includes a trophy, citation and Rs. 50,000 in cash, is one of three things that Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla decided to do when they set up the Chingari Trust with the $125,000 Goldman Environmental Prize received by them in 2004. Shukla and Bee received the award for sustaining the struggle for justice for the Bhopal survivors against the combined might of the Indian Government, Union Carbide and its successor Dow Chemical.

The Chingari Trust and Awards are an all-women affair. Chingari trustees, members of the awards jury and the award winners are all women. A jury of eminent women led by Smt Mahasweta Devi, renowned writer, selects the winner each year, by first shortlisting three candidates from among all
those nominated and then visiting these three women and their work.

DEDICATED TO GRASSROOTS STRUGGLES

The Award will be given to an individual rather than an organisation - however the nominees must come from grassroots peoples' movements. It will shine a bright light onto the struggles of women who have pitted themselves against corporate crimes and whose lives have until now been unsung and unnoticed.

Non-political and non-sectarian, the Award stresses the need for corporate accountability, even as it reminds us that we cannot afford more Bhopals in the name of development. Above all, it will salute the dedication, invincibility and tenacity of women who have refused to give up hope.

The first Chingari Award (given away for the first time in 2007) recipient was forty-five-year old Mukta Jhodia, a tribal from Orissa's Rayagada district, who tirelessly led a 14 year struggle against the Hindalco-led Utkal Alumina's bauxite mining project in her area. She, along with her community members, stopped the consortium from exploiting her "bheetamati" - the Motherland and vowed to protect the fragile environment. You can read more about the 2007 Chingari Award to Muktaji here.

HOW TO APPLY

Please fill up the application form carefully and send it back to us by the new deadline of April 30th 2008. You can send the nomination by post or by email to the following address:

CHINGARI TRUST,

# 44, SANT KANWAR RAM NAGAR,

BERASIA ROAD,

BHOPAL 462018.

PHONE: 0755-2747500

Email: chingaritrust@gmail.com

Please keep the following criteria in mind when nominating candidates for the Award:

•a woman  campaigning against corporate crimes
•struggling with her community in a remote part of rural India
•waging a sustained democratic struggle of at least 5 years'
duration
•non-sectarian and secular, unaffiliated with a political party
•helping to change a company's behaviour
•well-respected and supported by her community
•working at great personal risk and hardship, despite disadvantages
•whose current work would be significantly impacted by receiving the Award
•who would give inspiration to others around the country."