Every day we hear news about rape, domestic violence, poverty, corruption and various other social issues which make us wonder how can we try and lessen the prevalence of such things. However, eradicating such issues or solving these problems in a day is a difficult thing to do. So here is the point where the art of communication comes into play. The art of communication helps eradicate social barriers and encourages social engagement to help people be more vocal about their problems. Laying the foundations of social engagement within communities where people have faced or have been facing the same ordeals, have had beautiful results to date.
A third-year student of the Northeastern University, Colleen Kelly, helped women and children hurdle social barriers on everything from gender equality to domestic violence, both by talking about these issues and engaging the entire community and claimed that it was both a challenging as well as an exhilarating experience.
When we ask people to try and find ways of curing these social issues and help people stand for themselves, the most common answers people give is that they can’t influence other people to help them or make them stand for themselves. People who have been hurt before are just scared of sharing their life stories.
We have noticed that the thing about we human beings is that we have segregated ourselves based on our religion, gender, social status and most definitely our age. This makes everyone feel as if people of the opposite gender, different age as well as different religion wouldn’t understand their plight and no change would come.
However, having people who had faced sexual exploitation or domestic violence or were drug addicts come together and talk to each other has proved that it lessens these barriers. Through this talk therapy, people are usually forced to face their demons and see where they stand in their lives. To be able to share their stories people need the security of knowing that they are not the only ones who are facing those problems.
These social engagement group helps people open up by putting them in a circle where they won’t be judged and come up with ways to help each other. We can’t always solve everyone’s problems but when we can come up with solutions which are beneficial on an emotional level. When people share their journey to healing or the trauma they may have gone through, it relieves them of their emotional burden.
The main feature of social engagement is that it is like unofficial therapy which makes people try it since they won’t really have to pay. We should always remember that pain brings people together and lays the foundation of empathy and kindness and also lowers people’s anxiety with regards to sharing their story. Therefore, the idea of engaging people to talk about these social issues and spreading awareness about them is a successful endeavour which should be prevalent in more areas and should reach more people for better living.
Shivangi Sinha