Building Digital Capacity of Adivasi Youth

Digital Capacity Building of Adivasi (Indigenous) Youth (Adivasi Awaaz) – has been created as an Adivasi-focused media initiative by Prayog Samaj Sevi Sanstha, that aims to create Adivasi generated content and amplify its reach. It plans to enable and train Adivasis to use a mix of the conventional and new digital tools of communication.

In the world of Media and Content Creation, it has always been important to know who tells the stories of the marginalized sections, especially indigenous communities. Our project works at this intersection, enabling the indigenous youth to tell stories of their own communities in their own languages. As such this project achieves a dual objective, which is unmatched among similar initiatives in India. Not only are the indigenous youth enabled and mentored with the latest digital storytelling tools but are also promoted to tell the stories that matter most to them, thus creating a bottom-up approach. Adivasi Awaaz takes pride in the knowledge that we put the content creators at the forefront.

Impact of the Adivasi Awaaz project:

• 900+ articles and videos on a range of topics such as Adivasi history, traditions, agricultural practices, dance, art, issues and ecological heritage.

• 52 Adivasi communities in 13 districts saw an increase in digital literacy through our training in Chhattisgarh, Tripura & Tamil Nadu.
• 30 Adivasi women among the 190+ creators have been empowered to report on women’s rights and other gender-related topics.
• A growing family of 50,000 followers and supporters across all social media platforms. 
• 33 Adivasi languages promoted through our campaigns and projects.
• Over 2300 viewership through our first-ever Adivasi Awaaz Summit 2021 initiated conversations around Adivasi issues.
• Over 40+ partners mobilized through the project as Editorial partners and collaborators.
• Our Creator Varsha Pulast, from our Cohort 1 batch in Chhattisgarh’s Gariyaband district. Varsha won the Fellowship for Independent Journalists in Hindi, from the esteemed National Foundation of India (NFI).

Accolades for the project:

• Recipients of the Chairman’s Distinction Award at the Digital Empowerment Foundation’s (DEF) Social Media for Change Awards, 2019.
• Cosmopolitan India Blogger Awards 2021-22 under the category “SOCIAL REFORM ACTIVIST OF THE YEAR (EDITORS CHOICE)”
• COVID-19 Emergency relief campaign titled, “Emergency COVID-19 relief for Adivasis – Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG)” Won the Social Media for Empowerment (SM4E) 2022 awards organized by the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) for the category of Disaster and Crisis Management.