Today, we have turned 3. I want to thank all our readers and our wonderful community for the support and love, and having the faith that a community portal can really make people think.
YouthKiAwaaz.com (YKA) was started in 2008 as a personal blog. I was quite frustrated by the way things were working in our country and had decided to voice myself. From youthkiawaaz.blogspot.com, to YouthKiAwaaz.com, to becoming India’s number 1 online youth platform, the ride has not been easy. When I first launched YKA I wasn’t sure where it was headed. Every day, thousands of blogs are started and hundreds of bloggers give up on blogging, but somehow, the blogging bug had bit me hard. It took us about 10 months to get our first loyal reader. That is when I first realized that the inability to voice oneself was a problem faced by a mass young populace of our nation, and something had to be done. It took about 1 year to establish our initial team, and 3 years to reach a mark of 1.5 million readers a month.
Today, we are a hard working core team of 12, working from home, meeting twice a month and coordinating the work online – the power of new media. We power pack YKA with 30 awesome interns every month and a cadre of 600 correspondents from around the world, passionate about empowering the youth. We have created a niche for ourselves.
From doing investigative reports that got picked up by the mainline media, to giving a platform to people from around the world to demand Government action, and making sure that the action does happen, Youth Ki Awaaz still has a very long way to go in the domain of ethical journalism by the youth. All this, with your support.
What next for YKA?
2010 got us few of the best opportunities, from winning the World Summit Youth Award to creating our bases outside India, to enhancing our content and getting the policy makers to read YKA. This year, Youth Ki Awaaz plans to grow by leaps and bounds. Very quickly, here’s what to expect from YKA this year:
- We will co-host and organize a series of events on various youth affairs this year.
- YKA will expand as a platform, and you will shortly see the launch of our parallel micro-blog that makes it easy for you to voice yourself through a simple Q & A format.
- YKA will launch grass root projects for young people and empower them to work on offline projects and propel the change we talk about.
- YKA will expand into new media verticals which haven’t been explored in India as yet.
We would request and appreciate any feedback that you might have, which you can send via our contact form here.
The youth is the power of the nation, and journalism is the watchdog. Join us in our endeavor to combine the forces of these two and work towards a better tomorrow.
Thanks all, we hope to engage with you much more.
If there is anything that you wish to know about YKA, drop me a line at anshultewari@youthkiawaaz.com
From the entire team at Youth Ki Awaaz.
Anshul