Biswajeet Banerjee| The News Minute| July 2, 2014| 9.15 am ISTKhabar Lahariya, a weekly rural newspaper brought out by women journalists, majority of them from marginalized families, won a German Award for best online activism for creating awareness in rural areas and apprising people of their rights.The Bobs (best of online activism) special Global Media Forum was awarded by Deutshe Welle. "It is really encouraging to receive the award. It recognises the efforts of women living in rural Uttar Pradesh and Bihar," said Poorvi Bhargava, editorial coordinator for the newspaper. Khabar Lahariya, said.Khabar Lahariya, which in English means News Wave is an eight-page weekly paper published by a group of 40 rural women journalists. It is distributed in 600 villages of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and has a readership of about 80,000 per week."We focus only on local issues. The issues that matter for the villagers and are neglected by the main stream newspapers,” Bhargava said.Khabar Lahariya is also functional in Bundelkhand, a region ridden with poverty, low literacy rates, skewed sex ratio, high gender and caste-based violence and poor health education and employment, according to the newspaper's portal.Khabar Lahariya began as the only Bundeli newspaper in 2002. It is brought out by a Delhi-based NGO Nirantar – a Centre for Gendre and Education. Its first edition came out from Chitrakoot in 2002 and second edition in 2006 from Banda – in Bundelkhand bordering Madhya Pradesh. The third edition came out in 2010 from Bihar. “We have editions in Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Hindustani and Bajjika. It connects with its rural audiences with its unique local language content, rarely seen in printed form,” Bhargava said.Khabar Lahariya is run by a collective of rural women journalists, most of them from marginalized communities- in terms of their caste, religion and ethnicity. Many are women who have had little or no access to formal education. Sunita Prasad, one of the reporters of Kahabar Lahariya in Naraini block in Banda, an area infested with dacoits, from where other reporters do not want to work from says, "We write about them. We highlight how dacoits torment villagers or sometimes, for a change, help villagers at the time of distress," she said. “Two important things have happened in Bundelkhand – one this newspaper and other is Gulabi gang – the group of women that take officials to the task at the village level and fight for women’s rights,” A.K. Nigam, vice-president Bondhu Mahal, a Lucknow-based social organization said.