Kathmandu: This pandemic has locked us all inside our houses with limited resources. As social beings, we are turning to small happiness within the boundaries of our homes and sharing it with the outside world – thanks to social media and internet – be it our family-time, or cooking, or social media challenges ranging from the book one has read to the 10 best films we have ever watched. These are our easy ways out, thanks to the technology that kept us sane amidst all these uncertainties. But our society today, largely driven by social media trends which is very dependent on validations & praises.
We all are trying to figure out ways to mitigate our boredom, sometimes even through trying our hands at cooking exotic dishes. We have noticed that there is a very popular trend of displaying food preparations on social media, or glimpses of daily menus. Usually of nice, lavish, and appetizing cuisine from around the world. But is this the right time to exhibit such luxuries!
Do we even know how much hardship fellow citizens are going through to manage a regular meal for their families?
In these uncertain times, Ujaya Shakya’s Outreach Nepal has taken initiative to promote empathy and be more human towards the less privileged by remembering how much suffering people around the world are going through, and as a gesture stop displaying our lavish meals.
Outreach Nepal’s initiative is simple, just a reminder of the basic humanity which we all have inside us. This small effort is not meant for those who are actually suffering – they might have little access to social media in these tormenting times. On the contrary, this is meant to sensitize the forgetful privileged.
We all are witness to the misery that the lowest strata of society are going through during this unprecedented economic standstill. We have all heard of the 12-year-old girl, who died in India after walking for three days without food or shelter to reach her village. She died just an hour from her home due to malnutrition and dehydration. This could have been avoided. Life could easily have been saved if we were a more responsible society.
“Our small gesture was to bring forward the simple message of ‘empathy’. If this effort can touch a single soul, we will be an effective agency and that’s the power we need in order to become a new-age advertising professional.” said Ujaya Shakya of Outreach Nepal
