Youth Ki Awaaz: What Makes it Relevant in Our Times?

Youth Ki Awaaz, which literally translates to voice of the youth in English is an award winning and India’s largest online and mobile platform for young people to talk about issues of importance and seek action on them.

Making best use of online and mobile journalism, social media advocacy and new media tools, Youth Ki Awaaz has, since 2008, given voice to over 25,000 young people from across the country and has a readership of nearly 2 million people every month – through a community driven, owned and run model.

Youth Ki Awaaz was started in 2008 as an instant reaction and an outcome of frustration to the fact that the everyday youth does not have enough stake in the country’s problems, and there is no real avenue for free speech and mass recognition. It has fast emerged as a citizen driven alternative to the mainline media for many young people.

Youth Ki Awaaz is driven by a participatory, user generated model where the opinions and topics are crowd–sourced. The readers are the writers and contributors, and user contributions stay at the very core of the platform. The readers are the driving force behind the virality, relevance and sociability of our content, and are the ones who decide what Youth Ki Awaaz must talk about and what is relevant and important. We also run an 8 week work-from-home program that aims at training and equipping young people with the right tools and skills to communicate and write better, and voice themselves in the best possible way on very crucial issues. Started in Jan 2010, it has trained over 2000 young people from across the country till date. It currently trains 30 young people over 8 weeks.

The Youth Ki Awaaz Internship Program:

Youth Ki Awaaz’s award–winning, work–from–home online journalism internship program has become one of the most coveted internships in the country.

The 8 week internship enables young people to become change-makers by disseminating information about vital issues and articulating themselves through a week by week process – and the best part is that the participants can join the program from anywhere – all they need is a computer and an internet connection.

The internship program assists the participants in becoming responsible citizens while preparing them for the most exciting career options. It has been recognized by the International Center for New Media and numerous interns have attained an opportunity to work with esteemed media organizations.

The interns work on a module based program every week with our editors, who mentor them on improving their skills and coach them on making better use of storytelling, social media, advocacy, journalism skills and fact based research to opine better and reach a mass audience to address issues.