[Reader-list] Helpless City:Now SMS helplines are coming!!

[Syed Yunus]

A new SMS helpline for women has been launched By National Commission
for Women the number 6070 will be functinal after Deewali .This SMS
helpline has been designed specially for women working in call centers
and it is believd that it would be very helpful for them .
Helplines are linked to phone some way or other but now the use of SMS
as helpline will surly bring some new changes in its use and
abuse.Since most of the time phone is at the disposal of helpline
workers they experiment with it, some times certain habits are also
inculcated because of it.
Let me share my recent experiment with the technology. For quite some
time I was observing the pattern of 'SMS' I get on my cell phone and I
found that most of them were some what related to 'forwarding' it to
others. It creates a desire for recognition among the receivers so
that he/she should forward it to other friends for the sake of fun,
recognition or love, and I found that very few of them were created
for a social cause (some times it is for recognition too). I was
thinking of using this technology for social cause (when we send a
message from our own number it is taken as a personal message and
taken seriously)... deep impact!!
So recently when I was working on a campaign, I also started a SMS
campaign for social awareness of the law against child labour. It
picked some momentum but unlike anti reservation campaign I didn't get
repeated messages.


Yunus
-- 

Change is the only constant in life !