The Good Story Project

I wanted to write this blog post to tell you about a website that I have set up along with a friend, who is also a journalist and an ex-colleague.

The website is called The Good Story Project. The idea behind creating this platform was that all of us, no matter who we are, carry various stories within us.

Now think of these stories like seeds in a pod. With wind, and fertile earth, these stories take shape of their own.

We wanted to have a platform where we could tell these stories. So between our freelance work assignments and job applications and other stuff, we created this platform and we hope to be able to do some interviews, personal narratives and feature-length stories – the common theme behind each of these stories being that they are done with empathy, balance and sensitivity.

We started with a series on mental health and spinal cord injuries – there are interviews and first person accounts (both the series are ongoing). We are also working on a series on loss and grief and all of the stories on this theme are from readers – we invited people to share with us, how loss and grief has impacted them, what they learnt from it, what are the resources that helped… We are still accepting entries for this series so if you have something to share, please do or if you know someone who would want to share, here’s our email id: contactgoodstories@gmail.com

There are all kinds of stories, really. There’s one on how children from an economically poor background found themselves unable to continue their education in the lockdown and how a journalist was able to help them get smartphones and thus access to learning and education. Then there’s this beautiful interview with an author who writes children’s stories and how she made the shift from a city life to a farm life, and how she went about trying to live a simple, plastic-free life and how she learns so much from the land she now calls her own. And the amazing bit is, it is via this blog, this medium of WordPress that I was able to know about her in the first place and I thought it would be wonderful to be able to interview her.

This month, we have invited an adoptive mother (who, we also met through the medium of blogging) and we will publish her piece on Monday, in which she talks about the issues that seldom get addressed when one speaks about adoption, and particularly in India and why these issues are important. November is Adoption Awareness month and we thought it would be wonderful to start with inviting pieces on adoption, pieces that bring to fore different aspects and nuances of adoption.

We hope to sustain the platform in the coming months with interesting, engaging and sensible reads and I hope some of you will head over to our website and give us your feedback – constructive as well as critical.

Thank you so much for reading.