Why OpenCafe?

I was bullied as a child, but I never understood it. I used to be a bed-wetter till I was 10 or 11, it shattered my confidence, yet I didn’t know how to talk about it or who to talk with. There were plenty of things I needed to discuss and understand, but I couldn’t. How I hated being in college, how I wouldn’t understand what I really want, or my inferiority complexes, or how I dealt with my heart breaks.

On the other side, I was uninformed about whatever I didn’t personally experience, hence not available to people at the right time when they needed me. For a long time, I didn’t even know of a single person who was sexually abused, or who is gay, or who is depressed.

We don’t talk about any of our issues. We don’t talk about sexuality, we don’t talk about sexism that we face (both men and women and more so for the third gender), we don’t talk about anything that makes us nervous.

Recent MeToo campaign on Facebook only stresses on the quantum of untold stories that people need to share to create a larger sense of awareness, and acceptance.

Not speaking up isn’t just bad for us (#repression), but also ensures that most of us stay in dark about the magnitude of these problems. Today, with the Internet, blogs, we have all it takes to tell people that these problems exist, right there around us.

There is a plethora of anonymous stories. It suggests that people indeed want to share, but aren’t comfortable sharing personal stories with their real identities. In our society where things are still considered taboo or mystical — speaking up is bound to be hard, so being anonymous stays a good option.

But without these faces, it appears that we have a tendency to say, oh, it is still far away from me. It doesn’t happen in my family, my school, my community, my city, my country.

Introducing OpenCafe

The focus of OpenCafe platform (to be launched soon) is to help people to share, understand and reflect on each others’ stories. It is a platform to open up conversations on everyday issues that are hushed up, and build a culture of empathy and acceptance.

(For people who are comfortable sharing their stories publicly, just reach out to us and we will help you share your story on OpenCafe’s blog.)

The key approach is to allow people to share their stories, with blurred identities. A face (or in general an identity) makes the story more authentic, and reader empathize and understand more effectively.

People share their stories — in a group, so that a reader can see identities of people who shared these stories, but can’t figure out which story belongs to whom.

So, let’s say if 10 people including you and me come together and share our experiences on mental health issues, anyone can see these 10 faces, and read these 10 stories, but wouldn’t get to know which story belongs to you or me or any other member of the group.

How to form these groups?

Groups will be formed with some number of people (say 10) who have something in common to give cluster some group personality, but aren’t too close to each other (to avoid possible guessing by the readers and others). E.g. 10 stories from one big university spanning across a few years. If people don’t know each other in the cluster, that should be okay too.

OpenCafe.org Platform

We are working on a web portal (to be launched at opencafe.org) and mobile application to support this exchange of stories.

How does this help?

1. Creates awareness around the topics being discussed at the platform
2. A therapeutic effect for the community to have a safe space to be able to share their personal stories, with readers who are open-minded and eager to understand.
3. Strong sense of purpose for the community to be able to help in creating awareness for an issue, that they had to experience or witness.
4. For the purpose still struggling with some of these issues, OpenCafe helps them with stories that comfort them, and make them understand what they are potentially going through, and how to possibly get out of it.

We need you :-)

1. We are looking for people who want to share their stories publicly on this blog until the platform is ready when you can share your stories through the platform itself. Follow our blog to stay updated on the launch of our platform, and meanwhile, if you have a story to share, please buzz us :-)
2. We are looking for someone who can lead this full-time as the CEO while we support this strategically, financially, and otherwise. If you haven’t ever run an organization earlier, it is fine, we will groom you. But you need to have infinite passion and commitment towards what has been discussed in the blog post. You can apply through this link.

Credits

I want to thank Nishtha for being an inspiration and someone who helped me understand most of what I have written here. Without her, my understanding would have been quite rudimentary. Any contribution that I can make to OpenCafe or similar initiatives, will be a reflection of patient conversations that she had with me.