Meet ‘Fact Investigator’ Sangeetha from Mysuru

Posted By CMCA on 25 Oct 2019

Hi, my name is Sangeetha and I have joined CMCA as a Volunteer Educator only four months ago when I saw an ad in a newspaper about volunteering opportunities. Even though I am quite new to the organisation, CMCA has already brought about many changes in me.

Let me tell you a story about this transformation.

In September, I attended the second phase of training for the CMCA Club programme. In the beginning, I felt some of the concepts were a bit complex compared to the previous round of training. However, I also felt that the discussed topics were very interesting as they could be directly related to our daily lives. One theme particularly caught my attention, and that was how to cultivate a scientific temper. The session was about how to verify the authenticity of information we receive by checking for alternate sources before forming an opinion. I just loved the concept.

After a few days, I received a message on WhatsApp saying that the polio vaccination provided by the government was not safe, that poison had been mixed in the drops and a person had been arrested for this. Being a mother of a 3-year-old kid, I was so nervous; I almost decided not to get my child vaccinated. But then, I stopped for a minute and thought about CMCA training. How could I be sure that the forwarded message I received was genuine? I thought about applying what I learnt at the Volunteer Educators’ training. I first asked about the message to the person who had sent it to me, and he confessed that he had just forwarded the message without verifying the information. I then realised that the Health Department would be the best place to get the facts right. I tried to get in touch with them and called them several times, but I could not get through. At that point, I asked for help from one of my former lecturers. Within a few hours, she called me back and shared a circular issued by the Department of Health saying that the news I had received on WhatsApp was fake and that the polio vaccination was 100% safe.

I felt so happy and relieved and I thought the next best step would be to share the circular with all my contacts, including the acquaintance who initially forwarded me the message. I even spoke to the person who sent me the forward and asked him to do a basic fact-check before forwarding any message in the future.

I felt so proud of myself and enjoyed the process so much! It was like a police investigation!

Since that day, fact-checking has become a habit for me. Whenever I receive a WhatsApp forward, I apply what CMCA has taught me and, if I realise that the message contains false information, I make sure to forward the facts – along with proof – to all my contacts.

This is just a small example of how being a CMCA Volunteer Educator has changed me from within. CMCA has taught me not to look the other way when I see a problem and to always check the facts before believing something.

 

This blog was written in Kannada by Sangeetha M. E., a former CMCA Volunteer Educator from Mysuru, and published here in English with minimal editing.