Picture courtesy: Prafull-Oorja team

The Simple Act Of Sharing Positive News Can Create Large Impact. Here’s The Evidence.

A little over half-a-decade ago, we decided to start a website that would showcase only positive news across the country. It seemed a bit of an abstract idea, but we were keen to report stories of unsung heroes that mainstream media was not interested in and we’ve been persistent about it for so long.

What has that led to? Impact! Here is a short list of the impact created by sharing positive news:

1. Blind With Camera — We shared a story about a group of visually impaired people running a photography club. This inspired a young girl, who was visually impaired, to pursue photography too.
   “You’ve given me a new direction in life,” she said in her email to us. That was the first time someone told us we had made an impact. We had made an impact by just sharing a story!
2. Solar Lamps — In partnership with an NGO, we ran a story talking about how students in some remote villages in Orissa were unable to study after sunset due to lack of electricity. We asked our readers to donate solar lamps for these students. The result: We received the required number of solar lamps within a week!
3. Fixing a hostel block — This story about a school in Chennai that teaches deaf children led to one of our readers visiting the school and upon finding its hostel block in urgent need of repair, helped fix it by spending Rs. 3.5 Lakhs (USD 6000)!
4. Jobs For The Specially Abled — We posted this on our Facebook page and our readers referred people they knew who were specially abled. Via this pool, we were able to get eight of them jobs in interesting roles in different companies.
5. Financial contribution — Our story on a child-care center run by a 95-year old in a village in West Bengal led to many of our readers visiting the place and contributing a total of Rs. 5 Lakhs (USD 8000)!
6. Conservation efforts in a hill-station — When we highlighted how the conservation efforts in a particular hill-station in India had helped improve the place, a few government authorities read it and helped influence the conservation policies of another hill-station.
7. Innovation went viral — This video went so crazy on the internet that the NGO behind it got over 600 phone calls on Day 1 with offers of help in all forms! Again, just by sharing the story we had catalysed change.
8. Yoga goes global, again — These two wonderful ladies teach Yoga to children with special needs. We shared their story and here’s what happened, in their own words:
   “We have had people contact us from the US, Europe, Middle East, Africa, India! This include other yoga teachers who want to study/ work with us, media conglomerates such as ABC News/ Good Morning America, parents with special needs children, and students who want to learn and volunteer with us.”
9. Increased Forest Cover — A feature story on this brilliant innovator who can create a forest anywhere (including in your backyard) led to him getting media enquiries from all over the world (special mention: BBC World) and a project request from Berlin, Germany!
10. Change of careers — One reader, after reading this story, decided to try it out in another city and saw resounding success. She is now more engaged with the NGO and working towards enabling special children to enjoy music. In another case, we had 8 of our readers opting for a 1-year rural India fellowship program after reading about others who’ve gone down that path earlier.

All this (and much more) has happened by just us sharing positive stories on a website. No on-ground canvassing, no preaching to people to do good, no big fund-raisers. The art of story-telling is a powerful one and we’ve found that when put to good use, it can change lives.

If you’d like to know more about how we are changing news for good, feel free to get in touch: @dhimant or @thebetterindia