Malkangiri: Jayanti Buruda, a tribal woman journalist and social worker from Malkangiri district, has made it to the 2024 Forbes India WPower list featuring India’s top 23 self-made women. Jayanti, the only Odia in the list, has overcome many hurdles in her journey as a journalist in tribal-dominated remote Malkangiri district to being featured in Forbes. She expressed surprise and happiness that she has figured in Forbes magazine.
Being the first woman journalist of her district and also the first tribal girl to receive a fellowship from NWMI, Jayanti imparts training to tribal women of her district on journalistic practices and technology so that every news of the remote area reaches everyone. She has carved a niche as a social worker by founding organisations like Jungle Rani and Bada Didi Union that work on girls’ education and sexual and reproductive health. She started Bada Didi Union in 2017 with about 20 educated young women of her area. They first started holding awareness camps among young women about menstrual problems and the use of sanitary pads by going door to door in various villages of Banda Ghati. As sanitary pads were not available in the interior villages, Jayanthi started distributing sanitary pads from house to house with the help of the public. Later, she started Jungle Rani, a social media-based news platform which is managed by 50 tribal women from all seven blocks of Malkangiri.