Content Creator as #CreatorsforChange

Have you ever felt ‘fenced’ to explore yourself, merely because of society’s perspective of what’s acceptable? For example, you can’t be a weight lifter because of what you wear or you can’t explore yourself because people think what you’re doing is too weird. These situations can be found in any corner of the world and that’s why YouTube initiated a program called #CreatorsforChange. The programs’ objective is to raise awareness of social issues in the creators’ community through their YouTube channel. Two of them have caught my eye; you may find their YouTube channel under the name of Dina Tokio and Gita Savitri. They wanted to shed the light to those who are courageous enough to be the fish out of water.

Dina Torkia is a half-English and half-Egyptian Muslim fashion blogger who is appointed as one of the ambassadors for this global initiative. Her series titled #YourAverageMuslim intends to inspire people, especially young Muslim girls that they can pursue anything they want to do. She started off by gathering a few of her family members and argued their views about Islam. The things they argued on were some of the basic questions that pop up into our heads when we think about Islam, such as what it means to wear a hijab and whether it’s okay to question your beliefs. Her twin sister argued that it’s fine to question your belief, and she discovered the reason why we are banned to eat pork. What was interesting is how common these arguments happen, but at the end of the day we can all agree to disagree and still worship the same God.

                                                           Dina Torkia's "#YourAverageMuslim" series

This hijabee continues on her series by visiting three other Muslim women who are considered experts in their respective fields. Dahlia, a weight lifter, was the first one Dina visited. Just like any other hijabees, Dahlia was at a point where she felt it’s too hard to wear a hijab, especially in an area where not a lot of people wear one. She lost confidence and wanted to take it off, but it all changed when she joined the gym. Dahlia went on and was qualified for an international competition and broke the world record of weight lifting for her age and weight. The second one on Dina’s list was Emmy, who’s a well-known Berlin hip—hop dancer. She was fired from her day job as a hair-dresser when she decided to wear hijab, but who cares? She had won competitions around the world and now has her own dance studio. Lastly, Dina met with Sophia, a community development worker who’s working on ‘Muslim Women in Prison’ project. Sophia raises the awareness of the reasons women are put in prison and what happens during detainment and post-release. It was a more serious social cause on a different level, that’s unfortunately overlooked most of the time. For Dina, it was interesting how these women found more support in their community rather than at home with the Muslim community.

In Indonesia, we have a similar situation in a way that people are judged by how different they are. We see this through the lens of Gita Savitri who is an Indonesian student in Germany. She’s concerned about how millenials are spreading hate on social media and use ‘freedom of speech’ as an alibi. In her #CreatorsforChange videos, she described what it’s like as a Muslim student studying in Germany, where it’s so much easier to learn how to coexist and be tolerant because people are very respectful to each other despite the different backgrounds they come from. This was the message Gita’s trying to get across when she gathered some people her age and did a social experiment.

                                                          Gita Savitri's "Berdampingan (Coexist)"

In this experiment, she presented the subjects with a social media account and asked them to give a first impression of the account holder. Pretentious, too weird and bizarre were the responds she got from them. She then brings the subject and the persona behind the social media accounts together and they then understood why they do what they do. Gita hopes people could see past through the persona displayed on social media, because what you put out there is not the real person and everyone’s going through something you know nothing about.

There are more and more positive contents that promote change in a good way and I think it’s just the dawn of it. The above mentioned Youtubers are just a couple of Creators for Change and there are more inspiring channels joining the initiative. It inspires us to be more aware and encourage us to use our voice and send positive energy starting with your own community. If you were to create change in your society, what kind of change would you create?