Social Surfing in Leh Degree College

Socially Surfing Leh!

As we write about the workshop in Leh, there are plenty of words coming to our mind and at the same time they all fall short of the brilliant experience that we had in that unbelievable place. Social Surfing would have been left incomplete if Leh was missed.

Social Surfing in Leh

We planned to host a workshop at the only college in Leh which was earlier called as Eliezer Joldan Memorial College and now, has been renamed as Government Degree College, Leh. Continuous follow up and random calling/surfing by two CSR team members for a whole month and finally, we were able to reach the right person, Ms. Rinchen, Professor at Leh Degree College.

On the 18th September, a three member team (Arnika, Mehak and Vikram) reached Leh Degree College located at the heart of the city. We began with the team introduction to a group of 30+ students and initiated the first session that talked about the history of Internet. Before presenting, Mehak Jhingon (facilitator) showcased a video that captured social media in numbers. The video instantly grabbed the attention of students and they were glued to it for the next five minutes.

Social Surfing in Leh Degree College

Next up was Vikram’s presentation on the safety tools of social media network. The response to this presentation by the students was incredible as they were excited to know about all the safety features that were not known to them.

Post this we had the Tangram exercise wherein we had two groups of boys and girls. The boys were the instructors and the girls were asked to follow the instructions and make the required picture. We must say that the communication here was excellent as they were real close to make the correct diagram.

Arnika then presented on the topic of Counter Speech and communication in terms of social media.

Social Surfing in Leh Degree College

Closing this activity she started his talk on the importance of understanding the content and figuring out the best way of responding to it. The idea that Social Surfing is taking to colleges is that the best response to a bad speech is better speech Counter Speech – a fairly new term to India but quite an old concept if we look into it deeply. All the campaigns, the initiative that are taken up to highlight/resolve an issue is a form of counter speech. Responding to any obscene remark/statement/comment/picture in a way that it highlights the issue and deals with it well, is possibly the best approach that you can have.

Also, how you are using social media in a manner that a positive change is driven in is what counter speech aims at.

The last session, ‘Youth Rules’ invited students to devise their own campaign and present it to the team. We had five amazing campaign ideas by the students and are looking forward to their ideas of taking it further.

Social Surfing intends to channelize energy of the youth towards social change through social media. It also shared the importance and steps of remaining safe online and protecting your information along with defining the power that social media is giving you.

If you wish to bring Social Surfing to your college, drop a mail at arnika@csrindia.org.

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