The 2025 cohort was started on the historical day of Labour Day, and the first assignment of the year was to study about great kings, queens, social reformers and leaders – irrespective of their religion, caste, class and gender. The subsequent presentations and discussions were a testament to the open-mindedness and stand with Constitutional values invariably shown by youth. They reject hate and stand with the truth. Everyone expressed how important it is to study true history and to understand and spread facts, discerningly read the news and the media, and the importance of facts-finding.
This was followed by a 2-day residential training camp in which the Fellows planned out their next few months’ action plans. The highlight of this training was the launch of our “Manmauji Housie” module! This is another creative addition to our Mann Mela (Mental Justice Fair) games-based module. The fellows not only were trained in this, but followed it up by facilitating focus group discussions using this tool with their younger peers in community centres.
This was followed by a 2-day residential training camp in which the Fellows planned out their next few months’ action plans. The highlight of this training was the launch of our “Manmauji Housie” module! This is another creative addition to our Mann Mela (Mental Justice Fair) games-based module. The fellows not only were trained in this, but followed it up by facilitating focus group discussions using this tool with their younger peers in community centres.
The next training workshop in the next month continued this learning journey. Through creative exercises such as creating a catalogue of news cuttings, they questioned how the news is majorly casteist, sexist, insensitive, much more harmful than beneficial to the vulnerable groups whose stories actually sell news, and how they could not even find any news about LGBTIQ and Nomadic/Adivasi tribes; one youth shared that the only story they found, was about how indigenous communities are backward.
As young adults, who are just entering the responsibilities of citizenship, it is paramount that they analyse, question and engage critically with news – the fourth pillar of democracy. Is the news media authentically representing the truth. Are they manipulating or suppressing or sensationalising? What casteist, classist, sexist, ableist, heteronormative biases in the news harm vulnerable groups. What is the responsibility of news? Who writes or speaks in the news? How can Nomadic and Adivasi stories be represented truthfully, if their people are not in the news rooms? With many questions such as these flying across the room and their minds, the Fellows ended the day with gearing up for representing their stories on social media – to begin with.
