Umeed and IIM-Ally, student based LGBTQ support groups of IIM Kozhikode and IIM Ahmedabad, have come together with various other top tier colleges, namely, BITS Pilani, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Gandhinagar and IISc Bangalore, to create awareness about issues pertaining to the Queer during the Pride Month, 2017 (June). This is the first time that these colleges have come together to discuss and create awareness about these issues and create a space of support for LGBTQ+ equality. They are calling it ‘Queer pe charcha’.
Queer pe Charcha (QPC) was conceptualized by Anoop Yadav and Himanshu Singh, from IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Kozhikode respectively, over a coffee meeting in a small café in Mumbai. They wanted to reach out to a greater audience to create awareness and decided that social media looked like the best way to go about it. After long planning sessions, content development and inputs from various LGBTQ Rights Activists, QPC was launched on the 1st of June, to continue everyday for the entire month.
The LGBTQ clubs of these campuses receive many ill-informed queries, and they have decided to address these by choosing a topic each day, and create infographic slideshows to be used over Facebook. Also, they plan to interview activists and put the videos online so as to encourage further discussion. The clubs have been functioning for quite some time and have had the experience of organizing discussions around the LGBTQ Topic(s), and are now willing to widen their reach.
You can follow the updates on their Facebook Page here.
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