The document is an invitation to a conversation about the People's Archive of Rural India (PARI) project. PARI is a new not-for-profit initiative launched by journalist P. Sainath that aims to document everyday lives in rural India through a crowdsourced website containing video, photos, audio, and text. PARI hopes to involve public participation by allowing anyone to contribute content as long as it fits the mandate of portraying rural lives. The invitation is for a January 5th event where Sainath will introduce PARI and answer questions about the first of its kind crowdsourced archive project in India.

1. INVITATION
PEOPLE’S ARCHIVE OF RURAL INDIA
The everyday lives of everyday people
Dear Friends
The People's Archive of Rural India (PARI) is delighted to invite you for a conversation with its founder,
journalist P. Sainath. Sainath will introduce PARI, and answer any questions you may have about the
initiative, the first of its kind in India.
Date: 5th January 2015 Time: 3:00 – 6:00 pm
Venue: India International Centre, Seminar Halls 1, 2, 3 Kamaldevi Block (new block), First
Floor.

2. The PARI website, both a living journal and an archive is aimed at recording the everyday lives of everyday
people; it will host and combine video, still photo, audio and text articles.The site will be launched on
December 20th, 2014.
The website is not-for-profit, free to view and all the contributors - journalists, writers, film-makers,
editors, translators, techies, lawyers and accountants - are volunteers. It will be licensed under creative
commons (version 4.0) which means the contents can be shared by others, as long as it is non-commercial.
(The PARI website too is developed free of charge, by a global software company ThoughtWorks, at
Ascendas Tech park, Chennai.)
The website hopes to grow by public participation. Anybody can send us pictures, text articles, photo
stories, films - as long as it fits our mandate - 'the everyday life of everyday people'. Content on the site will
be curated to ensure the maintenance of high standards. PARI hopes to function on crowd-funding. It will
not be dependent on direct corporate or government funding.
You can read up more about the website here: http://www.ruralindiaonline.org/about/
PARI will be an important educational tool, and you can find out more about that
here:http://www.ruralindiaonline.org/about/pari-teachers-students/
We look forward to your support to help us spread the word about what is possibly the
biggest initiative of its kind anywhere.