Want to know if you should hold your crush's hand or you just want to understand why you feel the need to be with the popular kids?
What about tougher and taboo topics like all about the birds and the bees or about discrimination or even about the LGBTQIA+ community?
Confused, dazed and clueless — that's how most of us would describe our teenage years. Questions swarming around in the head with no answers in the foreseeable future, teenage can not just be confusing but lonely too. But they'll be happy to know that they will always find a friend in TeenBook. A non-judgemental pal who is a treasure trove of answers. Just look it up on TeenBook, a portal that is soon going to be in your hands in the form textbooks and an app as well.
Let’s talk about everything
Started by two very intuitive mothers who come with truckloads of experience in the media and development sector, Vithika Yadav and Arti Shukla launched the portal TeenBook just a month back. "Many offer professional tips, but what about personal life? We work on making them successful in their personal lives. We want them to feel supported and build resilience at the same time," says Arti. It is the knowledge that the portal provides, on every topic that affects teenagers and then some, which makes them feel empowered. No wonder the website has already received 10,000 organic hits. They even organised focus groups with parents, teenagers, teachers and even those from the rural areas, to understand what topics they should cover. And this was just the beginning of the research.
After the team got a sense of topics, they were further discussed and then went into journey mapping, which is, understanding their target audience, what they feel, how they talk, the vocabulary they use, and more so that the content is consumable for them. Then there is empathy mapping, wherein, their pain points, what makes them happy, their likes and dislikes are focused on. And in 500 words, the topic is expressed and put up on the website. "We want to be the Byju's of life skills basically," says Arti.
Here they come
But their biggest accomplishment are the two sets of curriculum and workbooks that they have developed, and in partnership with Durex, were ready to provide them to 10,000 schools in the Northeast. They also have an Augmented Reality app to go with it, which was already tested in six cities last December. "The point of this was that when we spoke to a few government school teachers, they admitted that they don't know how to bring up uncomfortable topics with children or are just unequipped to do so, these TeenBooks help children get their answers," explains Arti. Needless to say that everything is on halt due to the pandemic.
And to ensure that they continue to resonate with teens, they are constituting an Adolescent Advisory Board and are recruiting members from all across the country so that they can guide the TeenBook and in the process, TeenBook can learn so much from them. And to equip teachers with the skills they need, they want to offer teacher training workshops on the side. If it weren't for the pandemic, they would have started this already. But for now, they are waiting for things to get better and being there for teens no matter what.
For more on them, check out teenbook.in
