Everything we’re doing at The Better India to bring hope during these anxious times

I know everybody on the internet is talking about how positive, inspiring media is the need of the hour (yes, I’m one of them too) – but if you know me and @TheBetterIndia, you know we’ve been using the power of inspiring, positive stories to drive change way before it was mainstream!

More and more readers are finding solace in inspiring stories. These stories are spurning people to take action and help out those who need support the most. There is no dearth of inspiration around us, and we at The Better India have never found it challenging to find these stories of ordinary citizens doing heroic, selfless, inspiring acts for the greater good!

Along with the other awful things this pandemic has brought about is a looming mental health crisis, that we should join forces as a community to address. In fact, The Indian Psychiatry Society (IPS) has noticed a steep rise of 20% in patients suffering from mental illness after the outbreak in India with at least one in five Indians suffering from it. 

WHO’s mental health advisory recommends “minimize watching, reading or listening to news about COVID-19 that causes you to feel anxious or distressed; seek information only from trusted sources and mainly so that you can take practical steps to prepare your plans and protect yourself and loved ones.” – this is where we come in.

When readers from across the country wrote to us about how our content was helping them through the dark times, we decided to dedicate all our resources to fight this mental health crisis together.

Our team really came together in this past month to put together valuable, powerful content for our community, some of which I’ve highlighted below:

1.       COVID-19 Positive news tracker - A unique tool that allows our readers to track state-wise information about the pandemic, but more importantly state-wise positive news to highlight all the good things happening around them!

2.       COVID-19 Resource Repository - A repository of verified resources, explainer videos and stories of civil service officers battling this from the front, citizen led innovations and initiatives and COVID19 survivors.

3.       The Positive News Collective - An initiative to open-source all our COVID-19 content to vernacular publications across the country for free in order to push our positive content out to more citizens without language being a barrier.

4.       The Better India Jr. Edition - A weekly children’s magazine (to ensure that age is no barrier for our content either) which families can subscribe to, to instil positivity and inspiration in them during their formative years.

5.       Better Together - A Fundraiser to support the work of civil service officers and changemakers who are putting their own lives at stake, to provide food, ration, money, shelter and support to those in need. We’ve already raised ~INR 23L through our readers.

6.       Gigs for Good - To support our fundraiser, we are conducting live gigs by artists from across the country on our social media platforms. We had some lovely artists participate to build awareness about the campaign and to inspire people to contribute!

7.       Positive Daily – A daily positive digital newspaper, in partnership with MyGate, shared with 1.6 Million households across 17 cities!

These are just some of the initiatives we’ve put out, and as you’re reading this, our team is furiously building, curating and distributing more content with the goal that we spread positivity to every corner of this country when it's needed the most!

Have you checked out the content I’ve listed above? What did you think of it? If we’ve made you feel better during this time, put a smile on your face or lifted your spirits in any way – TELL US (in the comments below).