Can tech savvy teens affect change in India?

I’ve been at a VSO strategy conference all day on the outskirts of Delhi with the aim of helping to shape VSO India’s next three year strategy. We’ve had brilliant presentations that have put why I am here into India’s political, social and cultural context. A few random and surprising facts:

• 40% of India’s population are 13-25 year olds
• 40% live in cities
• The emerging middle class of 330 million people are mostly indifferent to the poor in their country
• Young people are not engaged with their country
• The Indian government only spends 1% of its GDP on public health (in comparison to around 6% in a developed country)
• A third of the world’s poor live in India
• There are 45 million internet users
• And 330 million people own a mobile phone...
• ...with another 15 million a month sold
• There is a shortage of Indian volunteers on projects in their own country.

For a country touted as ‘Shining India’ where is the government move to engage the young and middle classes, to promote active citizenship, to encourage those that are better off to help the poor in their own country?

Looking at the stats and facts above it seems obvious to me that technology and social media should play an important role in engaging the young who are the country’s future into actively playing a part in assisting their fellow citizens. With a largely corporate media do they not hear the widespread rural poverty, of the farmers committing suicide due to falling cotton prices or the wrong crops no longer suiting their climate-changed fields? If someone were to make it cool to spread this news, to become involved, to send tweets protesting for social change, to create Facebook groups, to document the failings of the government to enact change...perhaps India’s next generation would be the ones to realise that change. To be the change that you want to see in the world? It’s what the Father of India, Gandhi, wanted.

VSO, Web 2.0 and the Social Media Revolution

I set up a Twitter account before I left for Asia as I thought this would help me keep in touch whilst I was away either in Asia or later with VSO. With the Chinese Great Firewall in operation it never really got off the ground. That is, until I got back.

It takes a couple of days to get your head round the point of it as it's often described as Facebook status updates. This is too simple and misses the point. For someone who doesn't work in IT, media or anything to do with the web, I love it and can see how it is essential for those that do. I won't explain it's uses further. Wiki and plenty of blogs have done that for me.

Most charities too now have Twitter IDs and are jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon to publicise themselves. The reason why I mention this here is I had a phone call from the VSO Comms department a couple of weeks ago asking if I'd be interested in being given a Flip camera and setting up my own You Tube channel as part of a pilot project with five volunteers. A self-confessed geek in training, I jumped at the chance. So as well as tweeting and blogging I'll now be vLogging. I've been tweeting away and google-ing how to subtitle video clips ever since so I can increase access to the clips. That is, afterall, my job as a Sign Language Interpreter.

Today I got the confirmation that I will be posted out a camera. Honestly, the excitement was more than that of a 5-year-old peeling back the Xmas present paper to reveal the latest marketed must-have. So my You Tube channel is now set up, I've already subscribed to DanandHelen in Zambia's Channel and eagerly await by my laptop to see who the other three volunteers with cameras are and where they are headed.

3-5 working days for delivery apparently. That would be about enough time to prepare for my first few clips.