Overview

The Suraksha Setu initiative by Gujarat Police was a unique endeavour that aimed at nurturing a trustworthy relationship between the police and the public and creating awareness among the public about various issues. For this, Gujarat Police wished to use the most powerful tool of communication in contemporary times, Social Media. For this, they were looking for an agency that had expertise in the matter and could professionally handle this communication, and Decode Mediacom fit this bill perfectly. Thereafter, we worked closely with them for a year and provided communication support through social media posts that were conceptualised, written and designed by us, keeping their sensitivities in mind.

Project

Another major project that we undertook for them was making a film for a camp organised by them.

Anala Outdoors and Gujarat Government came together to fulfil the then CM, Shrimati Anandiben Patel’s dream of empowering rural girls from the state. They set out to do this by organising adventure camps for such girls in Sabarkantha, Dang and Hingolgadh districts along with one at Parvati Hills.

This would bring out some measure of confidence in them and would also give them a chance to develop their communication skills. Decode Mediacom was commissioned with visually documenting these camps and making films on them.

During the working of this project, we were primarily dealing with young girls, most of whom had never set a foot outside of their communities or villages. To make them comfortable with us enough for them to open up and speak freely, was what our biggest challenge was.

To overcome this, we tried to befriend these girls right from the beginning. We ate with them, participated in all the activities with them and shared our stories with them. It took a while, but the girls gradually came around. By the time we set out to interview them, we had earned their trust and they had become confident enough to share their stories with us.

The purpose of the trip was to instil confidence in the girls and develop their communication skills. Apart from the activities conducted at the camp, our interviews and filming of the trip also contributed significantly in this regard. Facing the camera and speaking their heart out were particularly helpful. Furthermore, the films that we made are now a part of the government archives and are used for training purposes.