From a social media platform for queer community to promoting nutrition and sanitation: Our social stories of the week

Nidhi* from Bhopal identifies as a lesbian, but she couldn’t come out to her parents. After turning 30, she had to give in to the pressure from her family to get married to a man she had known since her childhood, but the truth made him aggressive.

Today, it has been about a year since Nidhi got divorced from what had turned into a terrifying, abusive marriage. For the first time in her life, she has friends, thanks to Pride+, a new social media platform created exclusively for the queer community.

Pride+ is a labour of love from Aayush Agrawal—an entertainment professional-turned-entrepreneur—who runs Pranah Sandbox, which launched the app on February 20. 

Two months since, the platform has garnered 753 users from 29 countries, with over 400 users logged in on any given day. The current version of the app has six functioning verticals—Community, Jobs, Chat, Trings, Marketplace, and Meditation—and is available on Apple, Android, and Vision Pro. 

According to an FAQ page on the Pride+ app, users can create or view job listings on the platform, which “eliminates bias and promotes jobs curated for LGBTQIA+ individuals based on merit and talent”. The platform is currently free. 

Read more about it here.

Unlocking CSR’s true potential 

To commemorate a decade of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) law, Give Grants, a CSR tech platform, along with research partner The Bridgespan Group, has released a report, titled dus Spoke India Inc.

The report captures the learnings of 40 of India’s top CSR leaders from the last decade and their vision for the next 10 years. About 95% of organisations surveyed have dedicated CSR teams and 85% of organisations have dedicated CSR heads.

About 77% of organisations stated significant alignment between their CSR and business priorities.

Around 79% of the CSR leaders surveyed feel they need to strengthen their strategy in terms of clearly defining their impact goals and outcomes. Nearly 69% of CSR leaders believe there is a need to improve reporting practices for CSR activities. 

According to the report, the next decade will see CSR as a catalyst to amplify and enable impact with annual spending of Rs 1 lakh crore.

Studying winds and currents

From September 2018 to October 2023, Nityanand Jayaraman, a writer, researcher, and environmentalist, joined S Palayam—an experienced fisherman from Chennai—to explore the sea at the crack of dawn.

They spent these early hours observing the winds and currents, noting their shifts with the changing climate and its impact on the movement of fishes and migration patterns over the years.

Their observations culminated in a study titled ‘Sea Changed; Seasons Changed: A Fisher Science View of Climate Change’, which highlighted the impact of climate change on traditional fishing practices, such as the delayed onset of seasonal winds affecting fish migration patterns. 

Promoting nutrition and sanitation

Started in 2016, the Nourishing Schools Foundation (NSF) aims to address the problems of malnutrition, lack of proper sanitation, etc., by spreading awareness about nutrition among school children and transforming them into problem-solvers.

The foundation provides schools with a toolkit, which has around 15 games and activities focused on nutrition, sanitation, and sustainable agriculture practices.

So far, NSF has implemented its programmes in over 230 government schools across India, impacting over 60,000 children. The foundation now plans to roll out its toolkit to private schools starting with Bengaluru and Delhi.

In other positive news…

Achieving dreams

Twenty-year-old Sai Alekya Ravuri cracked the country’s civil services exam (UPSC) with a 936 rank on her fifth attempt. Inspired by the honours being accorded to IPS and IAS officers on Independence Day and Republic Day celebrations, Ravuri always wanted to fulfil her father’s dream of clearing one of the toughest examinations in the country.

Although she failed to clear the preliminary exam in her first three attempts, last year, she could only reach the interview stage but did not get a rank. However, this did not steer her away from her goal.

Ravuri, who belongs to the Scheduled Tribes, is hopeful of landing either the IPS or IRS job.

“My ultimate aim is to become an IAS officer, which gives me an opportunity to serve more sections of people in society,” she told TNIE.