International Rotaract Greetings to all the Rotaractors out there! On the enthusiastic occasion of International Youth day, Rotaract club of Thane North End along with Rotaract Club of SLIIT, Rotaract club of Chandigarh Himalayan, Rotaract Club of SainaMaina and Rotaract club of Dombivli decided to do a video questionnaire to discuss about the problems and challenges faced by youth in present-day and the project was named as VOICE OF THE YOUTH.

I was selected as the representative of Sri Lanka as well as the representative of District 3220. Rtr. Mansi Sinha from Rotaract Club of Thane North gathered us all and added us to a Whatsapp group, so it was easy for us to plan the project and to sort out the problems we were having regarding the project.

Rtr. Mansi is the International Understanding Director of her club and she was a great organizer and she planned everything to the point. She asked us to create a list of questions about the problems youth are facing these days and discussed about them. For few days I had no idea about the project and luckily Rtr. Mansi enlightened me about the project aspects. So I asked from our club members and as well as from club executive committee to send answers to below listed questions as a video clip. 10 questions were asked in the questionnaire.

• As a teenager what do you think you can contribute to the society?
• Internet and social sites were developed for information and education. How can we stop the youth from misusing it?
• Have you ever been in depression? What do you expect from your parents when you go through something like this?
• How easily is alcohol and cigarettes available to teenagers and how can it be controlled?
• Kids are forced to take up courses they don’t like. How can they convince their parents to allow them to take up something they like?
• So many cases of suicide and depression in spite of having friends and family, do you think it’s because of the communication gap? What can be done to avoid this?
• Does curiosity make teenagers to try drugs and alcohol? What can be done to avoid this?
• There are cases of eve teasing. How can we avoid this?

I received brilliant answers from my fellow Rotaractors and I sent them to Rtr. Mansi so that she could make the video clip by choosing the best ones. Within days she sent me the proper video clip with answers and we uploaded it on the International Youth’s Day. I was the eldest fella in the group and the young team including Rtr. Mansi and Rtr. Sanjeewani did a pretty impressive job. It was their first project as the newly appointed directors and I was so lucky to guide them when they were facing problems regarding the project. It really was a great time and it was so nice to meet fellow foreign Rotaractors and I’m pretty sure that now I know few Hindi words thanks to them 😉

Written by-

Rtr. Sethil Muhandiram

Vice president 2017-18