Community Journalism: "The Channels of Untold Stories"

Journalism these days is an attractive career option because there are many news and stories to highlight. From covering breaking news to researching features, journalists have a lot of variety in their day-to-day job. I always had an interest in journalism since I was young, especially in advocating for the stories of women empowerment as I am a feminist myself.

I was searching for the right channel and came across an organization which offers journalism by featuring women in a completely different angle. While I vaguely knew about this organization for months, it was not until recently that I took full advantage of the ‘Global Girlhood’ community based on my experience I had publishing articles in local newspapers as well as online publishing channels when I was young.

I realised how the Global Girlhood community has an entirely different perspective on journalism. The concept of Global Girlhood as a whole is a voice to revolutionize representation. Trying to learn the idea of Global Girlhood, I came to an understanding that this concept started off from the stand that the Founder of Global Girlhood, Pranjal Jain took to break the stigma of ‘journalism’ to cover breaking news and stories featuring high-end stories only. It began from her birth city, Jaipur, when she got inspired by many stories from women around the places knowing their stories are still left unheard.

Being interested in such a revolution of journalism approach that Global Girlhood has initiated, I joined as a journalist myself to explore and interview multiple women around the world as well as highlighting women from my own community. I connected with Global Girlhood through social media (Instagram to be exact) as Global Girlhood began its structure around using social media. They recruit Journalists and Connectivity Contributors to gather stories of inspiring women and react to those interviews to promote intercultural dialogue. Currently, their global community consists of 100 Journalists from up to 95 different cities, 75 Connectivity Contributors from 67 cities, and about 10,000 Instagram followers ranging between ages 14 to 78. Their team of journalists collects stories of women empowerment, and their connectivity contributors react to them. By reacting, they foster intercultural, intergenerational, and interdisciplinary dialogue. As an organization, Global Girlhood aims to cultivate a community where women and gender diverse people can bond, network, and exchange skills and leadership opportunities. Pranjal believes that in this way, Global Girlhood is creating waves of change. “We take most pride in our contribution to highlighting underrepresented voices on otherwise homogeneous social media platforms.”

I liked the Instagram journalism Global Girlhood had initiated with a whole new twist, where beyond just gathering stories, they are hoping to create bonds, connect journalists to each other, to their role models and to one another’s communities. I, myself, have interviewed women from various countries, ages and backgrounds which made me learn and adapt to different bases of knowledge and culture.

Some of the women I have interviewed are from the UK, Canada, India, Korea, Africa and many other countries away from mine, though I am based in Malaysia. I like to see the power of networking that has been formed and instilled from the Global Girlhood’s motive and mission. It is amazing to see and experience it on my own.

Besides, Global Girlhood seemed fresh and interesting to me as they handle stories and collect them based on unique experiences, not just the big Instagram activist influencers, but covering the unsung heroes in small communities across the world. As for me, I discover this can create a bigger outcome to the world because this is a way to create a huge impact by just covering even smaller news.

I felt that there is hope through Global Girlhood as this organization is able to prove that amplifying voices, representation, and global citizenship are pillars of social change. Every day, I see that Global Girlhood is growing in number of communities as well as collating more responses from women around the world. Fundamentally, the growing community of Global Girlhood is helping Pranjal create a global community she wished to see. “In a world that is constantly surrounded by a retelling of single lens Eurocentric stories, now more than ever, it’s important to create spaces for intergenerational and intersectional conversations on what it means to be human, highlighting stories of love, struggle and everything in between.” Pranjal hopes Global Girlhood can foster a meaningful shift for the future women. I am glad, thatI am now a part of this global community to create a change through a different alignment of journalism highlighting stories globally!

Sharafunnisa Ebramsha is from Malaysia, and currently holds a full time position as a Financial Analyst at IBM, graduated from the Asia Pacific University in 2019 with a Bachelor's Degree in Accounting and Finance, and specialised in Forex & Investment. While in school, Sharafunnisa earned the Distinction for Thesis writing. She has quite a high passion towards writing and blogging since the age of 12, varying from interviewing higher officials and inspiring women globally, researching and writing for local national newspapers, owning a blog, and being featured as a professional speaker for multiple stage shows on national television.