A Recipe for Change | Faye D'Souza | TEDxYouth@DAIS
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdjbOx-Mo28 Video ID: BdjbOx-Mo28 ============================================================ i hope you've had a very good day so far i would have liked to have this happen in person where i could meet you in person but given the circumstances we're going to have to make do with online nevertheless it's an honor to be invited to speak at this event i'm a journalist i worked in television for 15 years and in the last year i have quit television and i am now an independent journalist on the internet and an entrepreneur but i want to talk to you about the first story i did that action to change i want to tell you the story of that story i was covering a story of a young woman who lived in pune and worked for an i.t company she was in her early 20s one day she worked late in the office and took a cab home or at least she thought she was going home what happened instead is the cab driver and three of his friends took her to a secluded area raped her and murdered her i happened to be having a conversation with her husband who was fighting really hard to make sure that those who killed his wife got justice he told me that the driver had in fact misused the child lock feature in the car to lock his wife into the car and not let her escape and he said something really powerful he said if the child lock feature did not exist in that cab my wife would be with me today and that got me thinking about the number of women and young girls who take cabs on a regular basis without realizing the danger that comes with the child lock the child lock is obviously a western feature overseas children are normally in the back of the car by themselves and so you don't want them opening the car door on their own which is why you put in the child lock and it locks and it can only be opened from the outside but in india specifically to do with taxis it will never happen that a child is sitting by themselves in the back of a car of a taxi not a private car but a taxi and so we realized that we had this feature that came in built in all of these cars that were making it dangerous for women and we wanted to do something about it but at that point i wasn't a very well-known journalist we didn't have a large following we were a very small channel what could we have possibly done the more we examined the issue the more we realized that this was something we wanted to change because there was on a regular basis every few weeks a story of another woman who had been harassed or teased or sexually abused by a driver who had used the child lock feature so we decided we're going to do something about it anyway never mind if we're not powerful never mind if we're really small there were three things that needed to be done first to inform as many people as possible about the child lock so that they know that such a thing exists two to actually let people know when they're getting in the car how to actually check for the child knock and three to speak to government to make sure that the rules change so the drivers of taxis can no longer use the child lock feature so we started small because small is all we had we used someone's car and the phone which everybody has and recorded a video demonstrating how the child dog works and telling women that this is something they need to be aware of that when your video went really well a lot of people saw it across the country they pushed it to each other they said you must watch it you must be informed and more and more people knew that the child log existed and through that video they also knew how to check to make sure the car is not child locked before they got in so points one and two were ticked now point number three was the really tough one we met with state governments and central governments and i don't come from an influential family so when i came to the city i didn't knew no one i don't know anybody in government actually getting appointments with ministers and with officers was really difficult it took us a really long time but we kept at it and we tried and tried and tried and we spoke to state governments in maharashtra in karnataka in delhi and with the central government with the minister of transport mr venkaiah who is now the vice president of india and we explained to each one the dangers that the child lock actually brings and over the course of many many many months because we picked this up in september 2018 in july 2019 the central government and several state governments decided that taxis can no longer use the child lock feature and that new taxis that were being registered would have to dismantle the child lock before they become taxis this was a huge huge win because we knew that we would have saved many many lives we would have saved many young girls and women from harassment and from being groped or being sexually assaulted by taxi drivers because that child lock feature no longer existed even though at that point when we started it was small non-influential and didn't have any connections just making sure that you stay on course brought about change so today i want to give you very quickly my recipe for change now all of us in our lives have things that we see around us that bother us that we're not happy with we would like to ideally change but how do you bring about that change because there's also this sense of what can i do i'm just one person no one's going to listen to me everybody's going to laugh at me let's just drop it but i'm here to tell you that that's not true but each of you can make a change if you set your mind to it and here is my three-step recipe for making a change step number one is conviction you have to be fully convinced that what you want to do is good and what you want to do is reasonable that what you want to do will improve lives you have to have proper reasoning for why you want this change and more than anybody else you have to be convinced of that reasoning step number two is to hold strong change doesn't happen overnight there is no overnight success it is invariably a very very long road and when you hold on long you do a couple of things one you convince the people around you that you really are serious about this and two when you dig in your heels you change the universe so if we go back to the cab example we were convinced and we had proper reasoning for why we believed that the cab blocks had to come out and so every time we spoke to someone we were backed with data or we were back with information we were packed with solid reasoning and so tomorrow for example if you decide that you no longer want your parents to buy milk out of plastic packets and you have proper reasoning you have proper data and you are convinced about it and you hold on steady to that conviction they will eventually see your point of view so remember first you stay convinced second you hold steady for the long term and finally you start small don't be afraid of how small you are a lot of times like i said we feel like we can't really make a difference start in your circle of influence for where you are right now is young people your circle of influence is your home your school and through the internet the whole world you could put out a video if you wanted to and reach people across the world never before in history has influence been democratized in the manner that has been done by the internet today there are no gatekeepers you don't have to ask anybody's permission if you believe in something strongly enough you can put out your message for the whole world i mean imagine tomorrow if you first convinced your parents not to use plastic milk packets simply as an example then you convinced your school not to use harmful packaging that's harmful for the environment and then you managed to convince the world with the success that you had already achieved you need to believe in something that matters to you and when you believe in something strongly enough it doesn't matter how small you are it doesn't matter how alone you are it doesn't matter if first people frown and say what is wrong with her why won't she let this go she's such a weirdo over a period of time people will see your point of view people will hear your reasons and people will come around and it's only when you hang on for a really long time and you convince people not just through reasoning but also through actions that you will actually change so as young people today in perhaps the most powerful time in human history i simply say this to you the recipe of change has only three ingredients but the cooking time takes a while but if you really believe if you want to change something start today thank you