JOIN USBusting the culture of prolonged silence
People, in general, are often dismissive about youngsters’ opinion: no one wants to take them seriously. It is a culture we all have been brought up with and the tradition continues to persist strongly in our society. It was this stereotypical image of youngsters that irked Anshul Tewari the most and he decided to start a personal blog in 2008 to voice his opinion on diverse subjects that mattered.
Little did he know there were many youngsters around who were melting under the same repressive heat, and were looking for a platform to speak their mind. So what started as a blog soon became a website where youngsters could contribute and share their personal tales.
“We have built a culture of silence where opinions of youngsters are not taken seriously. We are often told that our opinions don’t matter,” Tewari, founder of online portal Youth Ki Awaaz, tells Metrolife.
“But when I joined college, I realised there were many like me who wanted to express. So what started as a personal website became a full-fledged website,” he adds.
Labeled as a “mouthpiece for youth”, more than 30,000 contributors have so far written for the portal, out of which, 15,000 have been published. On an average, they get 100 articles per day and rifle through them to put the best articles on the wire.
The portal covers a cross-section of stories ranging from plaguing issues to human interest stories; from stand-up comedians to the absence of women achievers from
general knowledge books. With a close-knit team of 15 people editing these features, Tewari points out how “authenticity” of an article is important when someone is sharing personal ordeal.
“Not all stories require background check, but at times, if someone has sent us an investigative story or a personal narrative. It is very important for us to check the facts. It might take a day, a week or even months, but it is a matter of credibility,” says the 24-year-old.
One of the recent examples is of a girl who wrote an article after she was molested by her diver, that too underwater. After all verifications, the article was published on the portal. What followed next was a flurry of follow-ups from different media organisations.
The portal is a good example of how online and mobile journalism is allowing people to reach out to a larger audience and has blurred the lines between mature and young contributors.
Apart from this, the online portal is also offering internships to the feisty young minds that need direction to channelise their minds in the right direction. During this two-month internship programme, the students are encouraged to try their hands at issue-based writing and storytelling journalism.
“We try to make it an inclusive, geographically-diverse batch. The more these students share with each other, the more they understand the issues crippling their respective regions,” he says.
Platforms like these ensure that today’s youth break away from the stereotypical mode and assert their own identity.