A Brief about Vithika Yadav, Co-founder, and Head, Love Matters India
Vithika is a human right professional. She has more than a decade of experience of working on many serious issues. Like, human trafficking, modern day slavery, sexual rights and gender rights. She is the Co-founder and Head of Love Matters India.
It is the first ever website in India to give complete, honest and unbiased information on love, sex and relationships. In both Hindi and English language.
She has been articulating the compelling value of the work on sexuality and sexual health issues of young people. Through various projects Assessing and understanding community/target audience needs, using human-centered design to design content/ campaigns. And projects and help fight myths, misconceptions, and stereotypes.
The work entails setting standards for promising practices, exploring strategic multi-stakeholder partnerships and envisioning a sustainable impact of the program. In 2012 she was awarded as one of the Top 99 under 33 young foreign policy leaders in the world by Diplomatic Courier and Young Professionals in Foreign Policy in the USA.
In 2016, she has been named as one of the Top 40 Next Generation of Family Planning Leaders under 120 under 40 initiative led by Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation and John Hopkins University.
And, In addition, she is a Design Thinker and an Alumni of THNK – Amsterdam School of Creative Leadership.
My opinion on Love Matters
Obviously, as a human being grows there are certain things related to love, relationship, family, and sex. In fact, staying healthy is important in life. Living simple, for that matter, is the best way. Why run away from some things in life and make things complex? Acquiring right knowledge and inhere formation is important. Why make life inscrutable for the things that you can handle in a simple manner? This is the platform that respects your queries, doubts, opinions; and promises to give prompt attention to it. I think, awareness is important in such matters.
An Interview with Vithika
Q1. What is Love Matters?
Answer: Love Matters is the first ever bilingual (Hindi and English language) digital platform on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for the young people in India. The project began with an aim to address the SRHR needs of the young people. It worked towards providing the critical SRHR information in a manner that young people could access it easily.
Q2. What is the idea behind Love Matters?
Answer: We endeavor to create a space where sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people are recognized and crucial information regarding SRHR is freely and easily accessible to young people. We create science based and rights based information so that young people make informed decisions regarding their sexual well -being.
Q3. When did this organization (Love Matters) originate and in what country?
Answer: Love Matters India started in 2011 in India and the project then scaled up to four other countries China, Kenya, Egypt and Latin America (with a focus on Venezuela and Mexico).
Q4. When did Love Matters originate in India?
Answer: In 2011.
Q5. What are the success points of Love Matters?
Answer: Love Matters was the first ever bilingual digital platform on sexual and reproductive health and rights that provided crucial SRHR information to the young people. In the year 2013, Love Matters won the prestigious Award for being the most innovative sexual health project in the world by World Association of Sexual Health. In the past three years, we have had approximately 26 million users for our website alone, with about 91 million website pageviews. On social media, we have engaged with approximately 1.3 million young people. We receive approximately 250 questions on our different verticals where young people can engage in asking the most confidential questions about their sexual health. Executing our #BearNoMore campaign in 2015 was an attempt to break the taboo surrounding Intimate Partner Violence.
The online campaign had around 63,000 unique page views. A movie on the subject was screened to 1100 people across three villages of Rajasthan. The campaign won the mbillionth Award 2017. In 2016, we organized a youth conclave in Orissa on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights. Around 10,000 young people attended the conclave. #NotMusicToMyEars was another online campaign by Love Matters India calling out the sexist lyrics in Bollywood. The campaign was supported by the likes of Farhan Akhtar, Kailash Kher, Milind Soman and UN women. The campaign won the prestigious Cannes Award, Kyoorius Award and DMA Asia Award 2017. We also ran #ChoiceOverStigma campaign which focused on the safe and legal access to abortions, which received a great response from the audience.
Source: 120under40.org
In 2017, Love Matters has also received the mbillionth South Asia Award for the first ever and the most impact oriented sexual health digital project.
And this year Love matters also launched India’ first Virtual Reality film on the issue of Intimate Partner Violence #KyaYahiPyarHai which was also screened in public spaces at Delhi metro stations for 10 days. In fact, the film was selected for screening at the San Francisco Film festival 2017, Berlin pop up VR film festival 2017 and LTAS Conference 2017 in New Orleans, USA. It is currently shortlisted for the 5th Annual Social Media Impact awards (SIMA) under the virtual reality category. Love Matters India also won the ‘Spirit Of Humanity’ award under the health category in the north zone. Apart from this, we were 2nd runner up for ‘The CSR Journal Excellence Awards, 2017’ under the ‘Health’ category.
Q6. What are the challenges ahead of Love Matters?
Answer: As a matter of fact, Love Matters India has been doing very well. Some of our critical SRHR related information is banned by Google and Facebook as they are unable to distinguish between good SRHR content and pornographic content. It is important for us to sensitize them about the good SRHR content and to have a system in place differentiating between good SRHR content and pornographic content.
Q7. Key achievements during 2017?
Answer: The #NotMUsicToMyEars campaign won the prestigious Cannes Award, Kyoorius Award and DMA Asia Award 2017. In fact, in 2017, Love Matters has also received the mbillionth South Asia Award for the first ever and the most impact oriented sexual health digital project.
And the same year Love matters also launched India’ first Virtual Reality film
on the issue of Intimate Partner Violence #KyaYahiPyarHai which was also screened in public spaces at Delhi metro stations for 10 days.
The film was selected for screening at the San Francisco Film festival 2017, Berlin pop up VR film festival 2017 and LTAS Conference 2017 in New Orleans, USA. Another campaign #BearNoMore received the Social media for Empowerment award in 2017. Love Matters India also won the ‘Spirit Of Humanity’ Award under the health category in the north zone. Apart from this, we were 2nd runner up for ‘The CSR Journal Excellence Awards, 2017’ under the ‘Health’ category.
Source: Thnk.org
Q8. Key objectives during 2018?
Answer: We are planning to make a virtual reality 360 film on one of the key SRHR topics this year. We are also working on strategy and implementation of various campaigns under Love Matters India. Apart from this, we are also working on a project for LGBT rights in India. This year we are also aiming to involve with design thinking to roll out need based user centric content on our website.
