Covid-19 has inspired us to build a global community for our Motherland Odisha, to connect the dots and reunite to spread good vibes

This post is in response to the #MyCOVIDStory Initiative by @theycallmedan - I have a story to share to my hive community - in fact, its a life changing story.

Covid-19 situation in India has been quite grim since last few weeks, and we see news from every corner, which creates negative vibes. However, Covid-19 has also taught us many things that are going to change our lives from here. Our perception of life is not the same as it used to be a year back. Everyone was running behind success in their own life, the definition of success in their own terms. Few already achieved it, some were near their dream, and most were working hard on their plan to get there. And then Covid-19 comes and teaches us, never run behind success defined by you. Because it may be ruined in very less time. And the nature of damage is so devastating that, you may not get a chance even to recover. So take a break, keep aside your success dream and start thinking about wellness - physical as well as mental wellness.

It's very important to have mental wellness first and only then you can plan for physical wellness. And mental wellness does come at a price - You need to connect the dots....You need to connect to the society and spread good vibes. There is nothing else in this world that gives you better mental wellness than this. It keeps you engaged, creative, productive, happy and what not. The self accomplishment from this is much more worth than any amount of wealth.

So with these thoughts, we started a global community named Abhinna Odisha to connect people of our Motherland Odisha , located across the world, to our root - the literature, the culture, the heritage, our festivals, traditions and what not. It's a global platform, for everyone, owned by every one.

The idea of doing something for the society hits everyone, but with time, we get busy with our own stuffs and unless someone connects you and reminds you, you never realize. Covid-19 worked like a blessing for this applying the brake to our own life. And a small discussion with few friends gave birth to this life changing idea - Build a virtual platform to connect to people of our motherland from all places. When you hit with an idea, the next step is giving it a shape and the first hurdle in that, is choosing a right name. And after few days of brainstorming, we were able to find a perfect fit - Abhinna Odisha (ଅଭିନ୍ନ ଓଡିଶା) - the meaning of Abhinna (ଅଭିନ୍ନ) being, not different. Though the meaning sounds simple, the word in our language is so appealing that, everyone will feel to own it. And that matches our thoughts - this is owned by everyone - collectively we can change a lot ( small drops of water makes an ocean). There are differences in every aspect of life when you further explore different areas of a state - but we all have a unique identity - We are Odias - people of Odisha.

The next step was to take our idea to people located globally and we planned our first event - କେମିତି ଅଛନ୍ତି ଓଡିଆଏ - How are people of Odisha doing during Covid-19 - the intention was to have people share their experience, bring some positive vibes to stay strong and fight during this pandemic time. We started connecting to as many friends as could and share this idea - a whatsapp group was formed, inviting interested people - few days of discussions, helped us to build the agenda, and then work started. We sent invitations to people asking them to share video bytes - we also asked many people to join the live event and share their experience and a small yoga session was also planned to be included.

It's told when you work for a great cause, greater cause joins you. A lot of hard work done by many people behind the scene helped us finalize the date to 30th May 2021. And just then, we had a great news - Mr Akash Dasnayak - Actor, Social Activist, Chairperson Mo College, gave his willingness to join us. This was a catalyst to our launch event.

The team put maximum effort to circulate our promos directly and through social medias and finally the day came, when the event was hosted over a live zoom meeting on 30th May 2021. You can see the full video here :

We had, lot of leanings from our launch event, that will help us grow. WE believe, through this platform, the global community will find and extend hands to people , who need some support. It need not be financial support, supporting their content on digital platforms, will mean a lot. One Travel blogger and youtuber shared how all his earnings have been affected. I am going to discuss with him and bring him onboard on @threespeak. Sandartist and animater RUBELAL, created this exclusive sand animation art for our event, hopefully, he can connect with more people through this platform. I will also bring him onboard here.

Many new people have been connecting us and the forum is getting much bigger. We hope, it will be an engaging forum, where everyone can contribute something towards the society.

We have now started planning for our second event - a musical event that will connect everyone. It will be a lot of fun and entertaining event. The first promo rolled out just yesterday. We will soon have more updates on this.

I would like to request @threespeak and @theycallmedan to discuss and support our initiative, as our blockchain partner. We are planning to support some causes with financial rewards, and it will be good, if we can generate some funding from our hive community and help this initiative. We can generate all our video contents with threespeak / hive logo, and share on our events so that more and more people can discover. And we can post all our videos on threespeak and generate the reward as liquid and use that with all transparency. Let me know, if you can provide some help with this.

Here are our social media links :

https://www.facebook.com/TheAbhinnaOdisha

https://twitter.com/AbhinnaOdisha

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz-Pa2ZdZNF5puV7bS7nLzw

I request my hive friends, to subscribe our channel if possible, to help us grow. And our logo unveiled in our lunch event :

More to come on our next event............

#ଅଭିନ୍ନଓଡ଼ିଶା #AbhinnaOdisha