Lucknow Students Smash The Notion That Millennials Are ‘Too Cool’ To Care About Voting

Anshul Tewari

7 years ago

As I asked, “Can a single vote change anything?”, the crowd gave a resounding “YES!”.

In the 2014 General Elections, only half of the over 100 million registered first-time voters actually went out and voted. With #JetSetVote, we wanted to change this. As important as it is for us to use the YKA platform to create awareness and encourage young people to vote, we knew we had to meet them in person and impact the way they think.

In collaboration with the Society for Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA), Youth Ki Awaaz invented a unique life-sized snakes and ladders game to train over 2,500 young people on how they can be active citizens by exercising their rights and responsibilities as voters. Today, we started with our first workshop with 130 students from KKC Degree College, Lucknow and the response was ecstatic! We discussed everything from their rights and responsibilities as voters to how decision making works.

The workshop was divided into two parts: Through a match the following game, understanding how various levels of decision-making work; and through the snakes and ladders game, understanding the voter registration process and their responsibilities as voters.

Below is a quick recap, in photos.

Students form groups to play the match the following game. Every group, with two facilitators from PRIA and Youth Ki Awaaz, discuss issues that matter to them, and which level of governance can help solve these issues.

The idea behind the game was to reinforce why it is important to vote in every election (central, state and local) and who you should reach out to for which issue.

The students took turns to highlight issues and left with a very clear understanding of whom to hold accountable for what issue.

Soon after, the groups started playing the life-sized snakes and ladders to better understand the process around voter registration, the forms required for registration or corrections, and their responsibilities as voters and active citizens. (All this information is also available for you at the #JetSetVote website here.)

In the next few months, Youth Ki Awaaz, Facebook and PRIA will be covering tens of other universities and colleges across the country, training over 2,500 first-time voters to turn them into active citizens.

Want to call us to your college or want to create awareness through #JetSetVote? Get involved here.