A small voice of an exuberant group of children and young people, who call themselves Umang (means Exuberance) Group, can already be heard from the remote mountains of Himalayas. Umang is the outcome of the endeavour of the children of Bal Panchayats and youth facilitators from the working area of SBMA/Plan, Gairsain, who under went an intensive one year media training under the Plan International (India) initiated programme called; Amazing Kids was geared towards highlighting the stories of children and their achievements to audiences in their own communities and to encourage kids in other communities to share with a wider audience. The main objective of the project was to strengthen children's capacity to document their own stories, to give them hands-on practical experience on the use of media for advocacy and to facilitate them to collect and use information for empowerment of their communities. The children took forward this intervention according to their own interpretations and understanding.
SBMA/Plan in its Umang initiative has established an innovative process that is taking child participation to another level by recognising them as a potential resource in the world of media–both regional and mainstream.
At Gairsain, the children took to AK like a fish to the water. A dedicated group of 44 children and youth facilitators underwent a composite training on multimedia and writing for newspapers, raising awareness within the communities and other stakeholders which also included the government. The tools used were photography, comics, internet, story writing, digital stories, and making radio spots. The children were persistent in their endeavours and organised themselves for concerted efforts and collective outcomes and thus Umang Group came into existence. Since eighteen months of its formation, Umang has been writing stories on social issues like alcoholism, gender inequity, exploitation, child labour, child marriage and second marriages etc. They are also documenting successful case studies and innovative and imaginative stories. This group have also attended advance course on radio programming. They are writing scripts for their programmes and went to New Delhi, which is 700 km away from their communities to record and edit their programmes. They use voices of the community to make it interesting and appealing to the community. They used these spots for community awareness campaigns through 'narrow casting'. They take these programmes to the communities and play them using tape recorders. They organised a media campaign on child rights using wall papers, comics and radio.
