CONNECT is ONE!
CONNECT celebrates its first anniversary. One year ago, in July 2020, we started CONNECT: a magazine for children between 8 and 15 years of age.
CONNECT is an online magazine not restricted by borders. What do we mean? This means that children from across the world, from different geographies, different cultures, different environments, etc., can share their thoughts, passion, opinions and dreams on this online platform. The content is determined and dictated by children, NOT adults. CONNECT believes that this exchange of ideas, likes, hopes and ideas will spark greater mutual understanding and motivate children to celebrate the richness of diversity in the world.
Simply, CONNECT believes that understanding and respect grows with honest dialogue and respectful communication. We want to celebrate diversity instead of fearing it. We are all human but on the surface we appear different by virtue of having different skin colour, cultures, languages, food habits, tastes, music, art, etc. This ‘diversity’ in reality makes us stronger, makes us richer and better prepared for life, when we engage with each other meaningfully.
One Year Later
In one year we have posted 43 contributions from children all over the world. We have published poems, drawings, pictures and stories from children in 13 countries. Many of these posts were linked to the theme we had when we started the magazine: ‘new beginnings’.
Contributions came from India, Nepal, Cambodia, United Kingdom, Australia, The Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Spain/Colombia, USA, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Venezuela, and Uzbekistan. We also started a column with Surpriya Singh from India and a section ‘Around the World’. After one year we are happy to partner with Writing Through, Anjali House and Sakthi-Vidiyal. Our Facebook page has over 230 likes, our Instagram page is followed by 23 people and we have regular messages from our Twitter account.
So….are you interested?
Are you aged between 8 and 15 years? You can contribute! You can send content about issues you are interested in: comics, sports, friendship, culture, music, environment, food, health, film, holidays, family, etc. Send your drawing, poem, video, article or story to contact@connectmag.org and make sure you give consent to publish it on this website.
You can also ask or introduce other children in the ages of 8 to 15 years to contribute. You must know that contributions need to be respectful.
So far, we have decided not to edit any of the content provided by children even if there are grammatical errors keeping in mind our philosophy that children should be given free rein to express themselves so long as it respects our values.
We hope this magazine continues to grow into a platform which connects children from all over the world.
We hope you enjoy experiencing CONNECT. Do let us know your feedback: you can write your feedback under each post or you can write directly to us: contact@connectmag.org
Team ‘Connect Magazine’
Priya, Martin, Veeresh, Lohith, Vignesh & Arjun
