#CityHelp Challenge on Kwai App Marries Social Media with Social Good

Hyderabad: Imagine spreading the good by simply participating in a fun social media experiment, which asks you to share your fun and quirky videos on a smartphone app. This is precisely what thousands of Indians experienced this week after their participation in the #CityHelp helped the poor and the hungry in their cities get food and other essentials delivered to them!

The #CityHelp challenge is being run by popular short videos platform Kwai in partnership with Clothes Box Foundation, a leading Indian NGO. The idea behind the challenge is to let people create and share fun videos with the hashtag. Kwai and Clothes Box Foundation volunteers choose the city with most interesting videos uploaded by its residents, and then organize a food and essentials distribution drive in that city.

Last week, the foundation’s volunteers went door to door in order to deliver groceries and essential items across Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh and Katni in Madhya Pradesh. The NGO did a live streaming of their distribution drive on Kwai, which was seen by over 20,000 users. Similar donation drives are planned for Hyderabad in Telangana and Gurugram in Haryana for this week.

“It has been more than a month since the nationwide lockdown was announced and the poor have been most affected by this. The #CityHelp initiative has been taken so that poor people living in big or small cities are not deprived of food and other essentials, hence our volunteers are making sure that food and other essentials are reaching the needy,” Sajan Abrol from Clothes Box Foundation said.

The campaign was enthusiastically received by Kwai users and #CityHelp raced to number 1 rank on top trends within a few hours of the launch. “We are thrilled with the response to #CityHelp campaign from the Kwai community. Our users have deeply appreciated the efforts of spreading positivity and helping those in need. They are helping others by motivating them to stay indoors and by spreading the message that we all are in this together,” a spokesperson for Kwai said.

Through this campaign, the foundation volunteers are also spreading awareness about the coronavirus and showing people how to maintain cleanliness and hygiene around them, and practice social distancing. The campaign will run for a full week and the foundation will be hosting distribution drives in several other cities.