Media Release
Mangaluru, Apr 3: APD Foundation has been retained as the one of MCC’s official NGO partners for spearheading awareness drive under the SVEEP programme of Election Commission of India. SVEEP stands for Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation.
This prestigious assignment of service to democracy is an outcome of APD’s long association with MCC and its proven track record in conducting mass awareness programmes under information, education & communication (IEC) for MCC’s other concerns like waste segregation and city beautification.
APD’s electoral awareness programme has been named ‘Ink Your Finger’ and it is designed to reach the electorate of Karnataka Vidhana Sabha constituencies #202 (Mangaluru City North) and #203 (Mangaluru City South). APD will be executing the programmes as per the guidelines of Dakshina Kannada SVEEP Committee and Mangaluru City Corporation.
SVEEP programme has been initiated by Election Commission of India to increase voter participation and make India a vibrant democracy. This was conceived because only average of 60% of the voters actually cast their votes during election. SVEEP aims to decrease the number of abstainers and also to eradicate other problems which arise out of ignorance among voters, such as invalid voting and not being able to vote because of not enrolling in the voter list.
‘Ink Your Finger’ aims to educate voters regarding issues like how to vote, polling booths, timings (residential & commercial), location etc. It also aims to sensitize the citizens regarding voting being a sacred duty of citizens in a democracy and also gain community support for MCC’s voter activation initiatives. 13 Post Graduate Students pursuing PGDM from IFIM Business School Bengaluru who are interning with APDF will be executing the Ink Your Finger campaign. ‘Don’t point your finger - Ink your Finger’ is the slogan of the campaign.
The programme will be a combination of two approaches, one of ‘public education’ and the other is ‘community participation’. It will thereby consist of a series of scheduled campaigns over a span of one month that will address different groups covering different places like Residential (Low Turnout), Construction Sites, Malls & Commercial Establishments, Colleges & Universities, IT Campuses, Government Offices, Markets / Choultries, Auditoriums, Marriage Halls, Parks, Beaches & other recreational areas. MCC’s available data and statistics regarding past electoral participation will greatly help us in fine tuning the campaign.
The campaign will involve large scale use of social media, road shows and other mass communications tools. An Action Plan has been prepared by APD and submitted to MCC.‘Ink Your Finger’ campaign will commence soon.