In an attempt to enhance voter awareness in the country, web-platform Youth Ki Awaaz and Facebook India have come together to launch #JetSetVote. This nationwide campaign has been formulated with the objective of informing young Indian voters about the voting process and encouraging their participation in the same.
The campaign will trail across 50 college campuses in the country in states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Manipur and Bihar.
Speaking to The Quint, Anshul Tewari, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Youth Ki Awaaz said,
As a youth enterprise, we have been involved in drawing attention to critical governance issues for the last 5-6 years. We realised that while citizens’ participation is high in dialogue, their performance in the political process is actually low in comparison.
This campaign seeks to create a community of at least 3000 students who are inspired to contribute their share as citizens of a democracy. It will include interactive workshops and games which will be aimed at walking people through information about governance and the election process in a fun and interesting manner.
“These activities will be focused on acquainting young people with the very basics to empower them by engaging them in the democratic process,” he said.
Tewari spoke about using digital media as a means to not only map current awareness levels among the youth, but also to facilitate the purpose of this initiative.
While many of them are registered to vote, they tend to believe that their vote does not matter. Another issue is that people are not very familiar with how the system works and that holds them back.
“We will use Facebook as a platform to create tools that will spread the message among young voters and make them realise the importance of their participation,” he said.
Tewari added that the campaign has been tailored according to the specific requirements of each city where they conduct workshops.
We understand that people in different cities access and consume information differently. Our workshops will ensure that the message of the campaign is made as locally relevant as possible with a focus on the specific needs of two-tier and three-tier towns. These workshops will be multilingual.Anshul Tewari, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Youth Ki Awaaz
#JetSetVote launches on 1 July and will be one of the largest digital media campaigns in India.
To know more about #JetSetVote or to become a part of it, visit youthkiawaaz.com/JetSetVote.
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