Who We Are: Anuradha Vittachi

Co-Founder, OneWorld Network and Co-Director, OneWorld UK

Anuradha VittachiAnuradha Vittachi fled her native Sri Lanka at the age of 13, after her journalist family was subjected to political persecution. This attempt to silence truth-telling human rights journalists reinforced her lifelong conviction about the importance of responsible governance and responsible media.

She has experimented with most kinds of social media - beginning with print, as the internationally published author of acclaimed articles and books, including an 1988 book on climate change and other threats to global survival (Earth Conference One, with Carl Sagan, James Lovelock et al) and another on child rights around the world (Stolen Childhood, to accompany the Channel Four television series of the same name). In 1992 she turned to TV documentary-making, and the following year won the Britain’s Premier International Documentary Award as producer-writer of the BBC documentary After Charity.

In 1994-5, frustrated by the restrictions and values of mainstream media and inspired by the democratic potential of the Internet, she co-founded (with Peter Armstrong) the world’s first - and still favorite - internet portal on human rights and sustainable development: OneWorld.net. Under her leadership, OneWorld.net won a cabinetful of awards. In 1997, she was chosen UK Woman of the Year in the field of new media, and in 2000, the British Government selected her to be the UK’s civil society delegate to the G8 Summit’s Digital Opportunity Taskforce (DOTForce).

In 1999, she led a process to devolve the UK-based OneWorld organization into a global network – now composed of 13 centers, from Finland to Indonesia - and was appointed the inaugural Director of its global governing body, the OneWorld International Foundation.

Five years on, thirsting to get back to hands-on creativity, she stepped away from this governance-focused role to create a new OneWorld e-media centre in the UK. In addition to the usual editorial work undertaken by all OneWorld centers, the new UK-based centre also initiated two major global projects in the global south:

  • an e-learning gender equalizing project in Nigeria
  • a phone-based project supporting farmers in India

In 2006, she instigated the OneClimate initiative: a unique combination of platforms that integrate Second Life islands (the OneClimate archipelago) with a niche social networking space (OneClimate.net). Together they enable citizens and organizations all over the globe to communicate with one another carbon guilt-free. Her hope is that it will help a new low-carbon world to be born – a world that can both survive and become a compassionate home to the next generation of the world’s children.