::Welcome to CCS::

OUTCOME OF CFW 2006

Vision for Friends of Freedom: Liberal Youth Forum

To create a liberal, aware, educated, economically free, environmentally and politically sound and empowered society.

Putting our heads together…

It was unanimously decided at CFW that the FOF grant of Rs 17,000 a year (out of which Rs 12,000 was honorarium to the coordinator) would be used for the groups’ activities. Our current and future coordinators present at the workshop felt that the work was motivation enough and they did not require an honorarium. It was decided that the honorarium amount would be decided by individual groups, would not be more than 20% of the total grant and would be shared by members of the group.

1. Application Process: Most (15) members were selected from cities where we had active or potential FOFs.

2. Participants went through a two-tier selection process- written application followed by telephonic interview.

3. Members were asked to come prepared with two presentations: one on how they planned to start/ strengthen an FOF in their city and the other on an issue of their choice.

4. The focus of CFW this year was on running campaigns in different cities: participants were given training on conceptualising, running and organising campaigns by resource people from various organisations like Siksha, Pravah, Pratham and Beyond Borders.

5. Manish Kumar who works on grassroots campaigns in Uttar Pradesh on gender and sexuality provided training on running mass advocacy campaigns in regional languages.

6. Participants’ presentations were recorded on video and they were given detailed feedback on their presentation style.

7. The Friends of Freedom: Liberal Youth Forum was born at CFW! Participants brainstormed on the strengths, weaknesses and ideas for improvement for the network of CCS graduates [1] .

2. Rageshree Dasgupta trained 56 members of FOF Ranchi after going back from CFW and Neshwin Almeida trained 8 members of FOF Goa. Akanksha Thakore is planning to conduct a mini-CFW with members of FOF Mumbai.

3. Pinky Hazarika, Prabhjot Sohal, Prashamsa Gadtaula, Rageshree Dasgupta became coordinators of their respective FOFs in Guwahati, Chandigarh and Ranchi after CFW.

4. Neshwin Almeida became the chief facilitator for FOF Goa programs. He has conducted six sessions so far on personal freedom and livelihood in Goa.

5. Vani Agarwal and Anuj Dhawan have been conducting documentary screenings and discussions in their college Madhubala Institute of Communications and Electronic Media. They also encouraged people to apply for LSS Delhi and have been mentoring the 10 graduates from LSS in their college. They have conducted four documentary screenings, a street play on consumer rights and helped organise an Asian-level documentary festival in their college.

6. Vani Agarwal, Anuj Dhawan and Deepika Sharma got involved with British Council’s Beyond Borders project and received further training on facilitation and life skills under this project.

7. Prabhjot Sohal, Sukhwant Singh and Anuj Dhawan became active members of FOF Chandigarh and helped in getting sponsorships and organising Jeevika documentary screenings in Chandigarh.

9. Pranav Sachdeva initiated a Beyond mini-Borders project in Delhi working on communal harmony and he was also involved with a project on child labour.

"Duniya badalne ja rahe hain," as Swati put it, did have an impact on my attitude. Plus it was the skills that I gained in the workshop that has made some difference which is already being felt in the works I do… The focus of CCS is on liberty which I understand and have imbibed in me. But in the kind of initiatives we (my friends and I) take, we do not exactly propagate liberty or economic freedom as a concept. Still, and it's very important, we promote liberal ideas through our conduct and attitude. I changed myself, we changed, our families changed, our relatives changed, our other friends changed, our peers and colleagues changed etc. etc. So it's all very subtle and gradual, I think that is the only way. Pranav Sachdeva, CFW 2006 (written for CFW memoirs)

Outreach