Yukti: skills and voices

Yukti is participatory community media program targeted at the age groups of children from 11 to 15 years and young adults from 17 to 25 years. We provide the resources required for their expression, weather it is a street play, films or a magazine related to their community. Every community will have access all the resources which will enable the children with all the technical and subject knowledge they need.

The sessions will be conducted for 2 to 4 hours every day after school hours in the community with the help of a volunteer/facilitator trained by Think Gudd.

Yukti will have a grand finale of displaying  all the activities done by children and young adults through an exhibition and social media, where the community will involve in process and participate in collective solution finding. When the program scales up it will redefine the way community media is perceived. 

Participatory Community media is often neglected and perceived to be a choice which the adults will make.

According to government of India there are ~892 channels which are trying to affect the way we perceive the things around us, which will impact our world view. But these institutions are not focussing on the stories that matter.

The other reflection which we need is the education system which exists,  Education that integrates integrated learning into formal school curriculum stands a better chance. The WEF reports that you need few skills to thrive in 2020:

• Complex problem solving.
• Critical thinking.
• Creativity.
• Coordinating with others to name a few

Indian education system unfortunately doesn’t focus on these skills, Its time that we invest time and energy in building these skills.

Yukti is trying to solve this exact issue of getting the voices of the unheard to the table by skills and voices with different tinge of making it happen through children and look at their purview on things that matter them and their community. Yukti will start the conversation that matter to the community and possibly give solution to the challenges which they see as the future impacting hundreds and thousands of lives.

Yukti is targeted at the age groups of children from 11 to 15 years and young adults from 17 to 25 years from underserved communities in rural and urban India. We provide the resources required for their expression, weather it is a street play, films or a magazine related to their community. 

The solution that we are proposing will give a voice to the sections of the community which has never had a option to express. We believe that the program will bring to the table the unheard important voices which is coming ground up.

As the community has an understanding of what they want to see and hear when it comes to news or stories which they can relate to. The top down approach of an alien society deciding and influencing the stories and news has to change.

Through Yukti Think Gudd will educate, give the skills that matter to the children and young adults in realising their true potential. This platform will make their voices, stories and perspectives in the challenges the community faces heard, through this will also reach out to other communities which might facing a similar challenge and learn and reflect on their solutions. 

Think Gudd will provide the resources required for their expression, weather it is a street play, film or a magazine related to every community we work to realise their form of expression in any language and form which they are comfortable with expressing.

Yukti is essentially where the children and young adults will learn everything from theory about media to conceptualizing, shooting and editing their own movies, creating a magazine, posteror a street play to put their ideas and thoughts into action.

Every community will have access 2-3 cameras, 2 Laptops and one projector with access to internet. We give the children all the technical and subject knowledge they need and guide them throughout the process. The facilitator from Think Gudd will train, help them execute and curate the content which is being created.

Once the expressions are created we will ensure that the stories and creations will reach out their community and other communities where someone else might be facing a similar kind of a challenge or learn from others stories. Through the power of social media and other media channels like newsletters and blogs we will get the stories out in a format which everyone understand. The advantage of creating content in regional and local languages will be leveraged.

The program will change the views and perspective of the communities and will help them to start a dialogue on the issues and things that matter to them as a collective unit. We will not just put the stories out but also facilitate conversation on issues and challenges which matter and take them to logical conclusions. 

Yukti will focuss on participatory media where everyone has their say in what needs to told and heard. There are few organisations who are working on similar kind of programs for the communities in India, but they are aimed at adults. There might be some programs for urban well healed children to have access to these things, but the aim of Think Gudd Foundation is to make it accessible to children especially from the rural and under served urban communities and come up with a different perspective to the existing challenges faced by the communities.

There are very few organisations who are working on participatory media programs for the communities in India, Most of them are aimed at adults. There might be some programs for urban well healed children to have access to these things, but the aim of Think Gudd Foundation through Yukti is to make it accessible to children especially from the rural and under served urban communities and come up with a different perspective to the existing challenges faced by the communities.

The aim is to train children and youth from the underserved communities and equip them with media usage and creation tools. Once we train the youth we would like to tag them with the closest non-profit organization create a communication plan for them. We will be majorly using open source media/ free to download media tools and still and video cameras. Apart from the media creation the youth who will be getting trained will also be trained in use of social media tools for maximising the nonprofit's online presence and reach.

Yukti will not only teach a few technical skill-sets but also make the beneficiaries more aware of their surroundings. We think Yukti is the tool that can help voice many unheard stories and can play a key factor in the country's socio-economic growth. 

Yukti will focus on the essential skills that arts and media education can augment curriculum with are curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. Which are neglected by the system. Education that integrates these key streams into formal school curriculum stands a better chance of imbibing the 5C skills into children The World Economic Forum reports that you need the ten skills listed below to thrive in 2020:

• Complex problem solving.
• Critical thinking.
• Creativity.
• People management.
• Coordinating with others to name a few

Indian education system unfortunately doesn’t focus on these skills, Its time that we invest time and energy in building these skills in our youth, children and community at large. 

As of now the program is an conceptual phase, even though Think Gudd has experience in running similar kind of programs for other organisations.

We aim to reach out to 3 communities reaching out to at least 300 children and youth and hundreds of community members to start with, if the funding is in place and expand our reach and programs to others based on the funding and our model.

Over the next few years we aim to reach 50 communities and reach out to more than 1000 children and youth across geographies.

From now – 2 years

Running a minimum of 10 programs across 3 Communities.

1. Initial capital investment towards equipment like Cameras, Laptops, etc. 2. Recruitment and training of instructors. 3. Documentation of the programs and result analytics for later use.

2 – 5 years

Marketing the results to get more supporters to increase the scale.

1. Digital marketing of the results (including work done during the program through youtube links), including SEO and SEM. 2. Increasing the reach of Yukti through paid and unpaid promotions in terms of awareness. 3. Using marketing (both online and offline), crowdfunding needs to be done on various platforms to get diversified investors for more public involvement. 4. Running the program simultaneously in other cities (depending on the newer CSR and grant funding received)

5 years and above

Post program recognition activities- Festivals, Competitions, Introductory workshops, etc.

1. After Yukti reaches a stage where the program is recognized and enough content has been rolled out in order to be fruitful, we will move towards on-ground activities like filmmaking fests, competitions, fairs, etc to be more inclusive. 2. The human resources will already be present since we will have a network of instructors and children willing to volunteer after completing the program. 3. Short-term workshops will be conducted with the same equipment and collective human resources to get a conversation going about the cause of the project.

The technology based programs in general have a lot of risks,

· Trained instructors: As there is a huge need for trained instructors in digital literacy, it is difficult to find well trained and quality instructors for running the program, especially in the rural areas. 

· Cost and Maintenance of equipment- The cost of digital equipment are high and requires constant maintenance, which will add to the cost of the program. 

The other issue is financial and funds to run our programs which will enable us to reach out to more and more communities where we want to make our presence felt.

As the program is a free in its form, the language, culture and other issues might be a barrier 

To tackle this issue of trained manpower, We are aiming to equip and train the volunteers from the communities with which we work and also encourage peer-teaching reducing the need for trained teachers, also improving the peer-to-peer learning., use of low-cost technology and sharing of the resources. The forms, language and cultural barriers will take its own time to get adjusted as the media formats are being accepted by the communities through the spread of social media and access and acceptance of different formats and availability of content.

5 full time

5 part-time

We understand all media platforms like no other, only because we are young and almost always hooked on to our phones. 

• We don’t just hope to change the world. Our expertise in the social sector tells us that we can. 
• Most believe that the words ‘young’ and ‘entrepreneurs’ are antonymous.  But who better to give you fresher and newer perspectives than young entrepreneurs like us? 
• We believe that to make this world a better place, we need to work hand in hand. We want to create a shared platform for all NGOs, instead of having them maintain in-house media teams. 

CSR Funding

Crowdfunding

Grants 

Growing Impact with limited cost increase and exponential growth: With the investment in capital already made, the results will keep rolling out with only operational expenditures to take care of.

The problem we're trying to solve, is the problem everyone running a cause faces- the problem of not being able to maximize their impact in a way their cause deserves! We live in a society where we're bombarded with information everywhere. How does a cause get past the chaos and clutter to reach their target audience? How do they afford hiring a marketing team or agency to get professional assistance in creating a presence? How do they find people who support the cause- financially and non-financially