While most of the working class is caught in the web of deadlines and tasks and suffer from Monday blues, there are a set of people who are trying to bring in some kind of constructive changes in the society but maintain a low profile and there are people who have ideas about how to bring about changes but don’t know where to go and how to implement their ideas.
To propogate the ideas of the present and prospective change-makers and help them impment their ideas, an initiative titled SoCh – abbreviation of Social Change – has been started by Nivedita N (26) and Subhorup Dasgupta (47). Their intention is to build a community of social change-makers.
Speaking about how the idea was conceived, Nivedita who works as a publishing specialist at Thomson Reuters, says, “I assist my mother in her publishing the housing magazine ‘Nivasini’ and we used to arrange talks where writers come together and speak about writing. So I thought why not bring together people who are trying to bring in some kind of change in society and people who are interested in such changes. I discussed this idea with my friend Subhorup and together we started the initiative SoCh in August this year.”
For the first session of SoCh, the organisers invited people whose ideas are bringing in changes in society like Anju Khemani of Drama Association for Deaf, where deaf perform theatre plays and Rajeswari of Thodu Needa, where she provides a platform for senior citizens for companionship or matchmaking. “A lot of people who bring in social changes maintain a low profile. But we believe that that they are doing an incredible work and that people should know about that,” says Nivedita. She adds that the audience, whom she calls thought leaders and speakers may contribute to each other’s works.
‘Founder of Our Sacred Space’ Nayanatara, who built a place made of recycled and environment-friendly materials, gave a talk in the first sesion of SoCh.
A person who attended the SoCh-1 has networked with her and is emulating the environment created in’ Our Sacred Space’, shares Nivedita, emphasising that their intention to create a network of change-makers who can contribute their ideas is thus talking shape.
Speaking about how they pool in speakers, Subhorup, who is a writer and a businessman, says, “We depend on our personal network for speakers. I am a blogger who writes about social changes and I get to know like-minded people. We invite them to speak about their work." He adds that now people are volunteering to speak about the kind of work they are doing.
The organisers, who intend to make the initiative a quarterly event, are pumping in their own money to conduct SoCh-2. They were fortunate to find a sponsor for the first session as they were running short of money.
“This is an experimental initiative and we want to continue it. But we don’t intend to form an organisation out of it,” clarifies Subhorup.
Though the organisers expected about 50 persons to attend the first session of SoCh, more than 100 people turned up.
The second session of SoCh-2 is being organised at Saptaparini, Banjara Hills, on November 10. Entry to the event is free.