My Pincode

    My Pincode

    Your Friendly Neighbourhood Facebook Group

    Our flagship program, My Pincode, has been our most significant project to combat fake news during the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. Through three tools, namely correct Information Dissemination, Engagement, and Awareness, this initiative has provided relief and aid to the inhabitants of the 739 districts in India where we are present.

    Type: Project
    Status: Ongoing

    Our Objective

    The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by a surge in fake news. To tackle the rising chaos of misinformation, we aimed to provide verified and useful hyperlocal news and information on a regular basis through this project. We have active #MyPincode Facebook groups in all 739 districts of India. What started as an initiative to help people deal with the pandemic better, by providing them with verified hyperlocal information to combat Fake News, has developed into an engaging online community of over 3.5 lakh members.

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    How Did We Achieve This?

    We began with sharing information, news, and safety guidelines only from verified sources that would be of use to our members. For this, we curated information from press releases and social media handles of the Press Information Bureau (PIB), Ministry of Health, State Health Ministries, Office of Chief Ministers of states, Local MLAs, MPs, and district administration.

    For Our Active Members, We Shared:

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    Hyper-local information

    (Details about essential services, containment zones, Corona testing being done, etc.)

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    State-level information

    (Corona cases and guidelines, hotspots, how to get passes, etc.)

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    National-level information

    (Latest guidelines on lockdowns, transport, etc.)

    Overcoming language and cultural barriers, we have managed to build a team of community managers who help us acquire hyperlocal information from all these districts. We have additionally managed to simplify the national and state-level information through infographics.

    However, as we were slowly turning into an online community, our My Pincode initiative acted as active platforms to:

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    1. Post and cater to distress calls instantaneously. 
    2. Post and cater to verified blood and plasma requests instantaneously (600+ individual blood donation requests fulfilled). 
    3. Ration to the people who lost jobs during the COVID lockdown ( rations to more than 1 lakh people). 
    4. Help migrants and daily wage workers who were stranded away from home or were in urgent need of ration (Helped 173 migrants reach home. Provided over 50,000 food and water kits to the migrants).

    Project My Pincode

    is an ever-growing community that has been acting as a pillar of support to its members. Through this project, we conduct state-wide campaigns to highlight problems such as issues of discrimination, social evils and also celebrate the heritage of these districts. Today, we are a proud community of over 3.5 lakh members, aware, updated, and continually trying to stay conscious.