Sukhayan is passionate about social change. While it promotes NGOs that are doing good work to address various social challenges, it also wants to open conversations on various topics that are important for us as society and help evolve our collective thinking. To be able to do this, Sukhayan started Matters That Matter – an interview series.
Matters That Matter aka MTM picks up topics that need open discussion, invites people that have experience, expertise or insight into the topics, and interview them to unpack the topics, so people unfamiliar with these topics build familiarity with them, maybe even confront their discomfort with these topics, interact with the interviewees through questions and start introspecting if not aligning with unfamiliar ideas.
The first interview in Matters That Matter was of an LGBTQ+ activist Indrajeet Ghorpade. Known as Jeet, he has started an online platform for LGBTQ+ advocacy called Yes, We Exist. Jeet in the MTM interview unpacked the LGBTQ+ identity, challenges the community members face as they grow up, societal biases and misunderstanding that are prevalent and how to deal with them on both sides of the problem.
We then went to the taboo topic of mental health. Ms Ritika Latke Shinde – a US based psychotherapist – enlightened the audience on the topic of depression, how to notice it and how to deal with it. Her video was very widely viewed and interacted with.
Given the interest in the topic, we double-clicked on it with an interview with senior psychiatrist Dr Sandeep Mahamuni. Dr Mahamuni spoke about how to diagnose a mental illness, various therapies, misunderstanding about mental illnesses and how to tackle them, etc. This interview was also well received.
We then went back to the topic of LGBTQ+ community members and highlighted the challenges faced by the transgender community members through an interview with Ms Chandni Gore – a transgender activist who is celebrated for her work for the community as well as for underprivileged kids helping them to fight lack of education and exposure to sexual exploitation. Ms Chandni lay threadbare what how the transgender community comes together and functions, the challenges transgender children face when they decide to come out of the closet, their journey towards the trangender community due to lack of societal support and acceptance and then the challenges of livelihood. It was eye opening to listen to these experiences and how much we try to brush under the carpet some of these challenges.
We have just started a series on the topic of unconscious bias. There are several implicit biases that impact us as a human species. It’s important for us to understand biases, how they interfere with our decision making and how we need to tackle their negative impact on society. In this series the first interview was of Dr Nitin More, CEO of Brainayan and a senior learning and development expert. He spoke of the concept of biases, how they affect our decision making and why and how we need to be watchful of their negative impact and tackle them. We are going to invite other experts that have deep experience in specific biases, so we collectively can build awareness of these biases and how to minimize their unwanted impact.
Activities
Right from its inception in 2018, Sukhayan has committed itself to fuse various art-forms with social cause. One way to achieve this in today’s social-media-obsessed world is to create posts related to various international, national days. These days are celebrated to create awareness regarding a particular issue that needs attention and action on part of our society. On the occasion of some selected days, Sukhayan, on its social media platforms, shares posts related to these days and their intent. These posts bring out the full import of that day either in the form of a short note or a video curated by experts in the field.