It was Day
2 on the workshop “The Use of Social Media in Biodiversity Conservation”
organized by CEE, Lucknow. Most of the experts giving presentations were cool
and interesting and yet sitting throughout two days in succession had drained
me a bit physically and mentally. Towards the end of the day, Shailaja
Rabindranathan, Project Co-ordinater CEE, South asked us to come up with an
idea, basically a rough idea to work on with. I was sharing the table with my
mate Rahul Acharya, with whom I had travelled there with, Brojo Kumar
Basumatry, Thing and Shiwani Thakur, all our table could come up with was a
plantation program. It wasn’t innovative or different on any way and the fact
that plantation program has been going on by hundreds of organization didn’t
help and it didn’t seem to fit that well for an online campaign.
The ideas
of other tables were also nothing new and promising as Shailaja madam rightly
pointed out and God she was frustrated. In fact she had every right to get dissatisfied
as for two whole days and even during lunch and dinner she and Pramod Sharma
sir were tirelessly putting an effort to make us clear about the underlying
concepts, things that mattered, case studies, Q &A, and everything. She
asked if she had wasted her time and resources on us. This killed me, I was
dying to prove otherwise. She said few other words in a way challenging us to
come up with something new tomorrow, the last day of workshop. I was stirred
and damn motivated.
That night
we went to Ambedkar park which was majestic and it was fun roaming the city with
the guys.
I slept
very light that night, I had no idea to work on, how was I going to face
Shailaja madam? I asked myself.
It must
have been 4 in the morning when I woke up, I couldn’t sleep. I went to the
bathroom washed my face and lay back in the bed, closing my eyes and thought about
the things that we could do, the presentation of Pramod sir recurred, the
journey to lucknow, my study and many countless varied thoughts.
It
occurred to me people in general don’t care about environment while they are online,
say biodiversity and many start dozing off. If I had to draw their attention
and engage them , I had to come with a gamefied approach and the notion of
Selfie with Butterfly that Shailaja madam had shared yesterday came to my mind.
This was a moment of a small mental triumph as I was finally getting the idea.
Then I
left my bed, took a pen and a notebook and started scribbling. Selfie with
Butterfly would limit participation so I thought may be Selfie with Insects and
right at that moment I felt this is it. I even pumped a fist in the air.
At around
6AM, Rahul woke up and I shared him the
idea I had come up with and he was ecstatic. We brainstormed the idea for a
while.
Brojo and
Thang joined us for tea and we shared the idea and they were excited. This
could work really well I said as Brojo,
himself is a Butterfly enthusiast and had reported over 30 endemic species of
Butterflies from Assam.
Later on
Shiwani and Ananya joined us and we shared them the idea of Selfie with
Insects. They loved it. They came up with the word “Keedafie” , this was good
news as keedafie sounded cool and could create a serious buzz.
Then we
shared the idea of Keedafie with Shailaja madam and she said, “I like it” with
her thumbs up, smiling and delightful face. I was over the moon. We discussed the
approach we would be taking, called ourselves BTRAPS after the initials of team
members and wrote the project proposal in the format given by CEE.
We set a
target of reaching 5000 people and by the end we reached to more than 30000
people. We got 65 entries lovely entries for keedafie challenge and on June 5,
2015 CEE on their website selected top 3 projects launched from the workshop
and to our delight Project Keedafie was judged the best project. The Online
campaign continues.
I am
grateful to Shailaja madam and Pramod sir for teaching and inspiring me. Thank
you Aksana for sharing the link to the workshop.
BTRAPS, we
rock!
https://www.facebook.com/keedafie.btraps?ref=bookmarks
