Bolstering Their Voice

My association with Gobar Times (GT) has been in two stints. The first of these was some years ago, when we decided to give it a makeover. Rustam Vania (read more on pg. 4-5), one of the original creators, stepped in to guide us, and a new look of the magazine was born. The second stint is the one ongoing, in which the magazine has found a place as a slim e-publication on a colourful new website for the young, the Young Environmentalist . As a mentor for these two avatars, I must say it has been a deeply satisfying experience.

I believe what GT offers its team is quite invaluable: an opportunity to reimagine somewhat complex subjects so that they can ignite young minds to think and reflect. Often, some of these subjects are not exactly unfamiliar territory that a child traverses – GT merely holds them up in a new light. It is a challenging task, of course, this constant and consistent effort to create, recreate, and visualise content that would make sense to a curious and as I have found very often – questioning – young mind. I do believe that this challenge has been met successfully and with equal perseverance by our extremely talented team here.

We are living in tough times. Times in which the Earth and its well-being is under serious threat from climate change, growing pollution and contamination, and a surge of unknown and little- known diseases. There is also increasing poverty, resource crunch, and the world’s inability to collectively, jointly address most of these concerns. In such times, the children and the youth perhaps hold the key to a resolution. We have seen that they do have a powerful voice, one that has popular appeal, one that is heard and noticed globally. This voice needs to be kept alive and thriving; it needs to be nurtured, made stronger so that it can reach the parliaments of our nations, the boardrooms of our corporates, and parents and families. My fervent hope and wish is that GT will – as it is doing now – continue to help in this process of bolstering.