e-News & Journalism, Winner 2013

Halabol is an online medium that gives issues, causes and their supporters, an online and offline platform, to amplify their voices. The web portal reaches out to relevant and large audiences across the country. Citizens, NGO’s and Corporate are currently using this service. It has 90,000+ followers on facebook and 2500+ followers on twitter.

Halabol provides relevant content to the socially inclined users in form of articles through its media arm called ‘Voices’. Socially relevant content on various issue the categories (environment, women, governance etc.) are also shared through blogs. All the content on Halabol portal is curated for social media audience. Halabol TV delivers socially relevant and inspiring videos to its audience. This web based project creates a sustainable platform, where the collective participation of the constituents – citizens, social sector organisations, and businesses – shall eliminate the gaps in the information, provide knowledge repository, and ensure full transparency and accountability.

The platform is catalysing meaningful social changes by developing and enabling individuals, groups, and organisations to pool resources and to jointly advance a cause. It provides a platform that facilitates the collaboration of Citizens, Social Sector Organizations, and Businesses to impact positive social change; creating philanthropic leaders and generating economic values in the process. Various initiatives are there that cater to the requirements of social change online, though in bits and pieces, and therefore, there is need for a comprehensive platform that integrates and addresses all these requirements.

Kannadanet.com is a portal in North Karnataka where Internet usage and awareness is low. The portal provides daily news updates, information regarding state government schemes and data and images about Koppal District in Kannada language. To increase internet awareness and availability of Koppal district data it has created different blogs for different occasion.

Kannadanet.com provides all the relevant information to Koppal to the local people in their own language. In the last, Koppal was referred to as ‘Kopana Nagara’; Hampi, a world heritage centre. The site’s advantage is providing data in Kannada language. The usage of Internet in north Kar-nataka as well as in Koppal has also increased. It has also created a blog kannadanet.blogspot.com that is more popular than the website. Many access Kopal on Android mobile also. The coming of new technology like 3G and 4G, along with the availability of devices like tablets and the increasing penetration of the smartphone will mean that more and more language users will get onto the search bandwagon. This is where the search market will grow. The portal has also started updating data and news through android mobiles. The portal is making use of social net-works for spreading links of data and news. Kannadanet.com reaches thousands of readers all over the world.

Youth Ki Awaaz is a portal that presents views, opinions, analysis and reports on issues that matter to the young generation. This platform mobilises and engages young people in participatory and collaborative journalism. Currently, it has over 4 million hits, nearly 900,000 page views and 150,000 unique readers every month.

Youth Ki Awaaz, which literally translates to ‘voice of the youth’ in English, is an online platform for young people to express themselves on issues of importance. The portal combines the dy-namism of the youth with the power of journalism and new media to create compelling content that reaches out to a mass audience in order to create awareness, and is thought provoking. The website makes best use of online journalism and new media tools such as blogs and forums to mobilise youths. The platform also runs India’s popular work-from-home online journalism in-ternship program that trains and equips young people in skills to express themselves on crucial is-sues and also develop skills for professional communication.

Impact:

• Over 15000 young people have written their opinions for the platform.
• Engaged 2000 young people at any point to write their opinions on pertinent issues.
• Trained over 1200 young people as a part of the work-from-home training program.
• Did stories that did not find space in mainline media but have been very pertinent.
• Actions on issues such as lack of safety for women in Delhi Metro.
• Provided a strong platform for non-profits to engage with young people and create an outreach channel for their issues.
• Given voice to a large unheard community in India.