About Me: My Name Is Vikas, I am currently pursuing my Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering from Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University, Rajouri. I have completed my Diploma in Computer Engineering from Kashmir Government Polytechnic, Srinagar. I am a Freelance Designer and Developer, my main focus is Scalable and performance-optimized solutions for Businesses. I have represented J&K at World Skills India in Web Design and Development. Apart from that I am a contributor to Open Source Community, my recent work involves covidkashmir.org (an independent and open source covid-19 tracking project). 

A few sentences on your Peer to Peer: Facebook Global Digital Challenge program experience: Building FOSS software’s and graphics that have reached thousands of people, influencing people through campaigns, contributing to open source community was really an amazing experience while working on Peer to Peer: Facebook Global Digital Challenge. As a coder and a designer it was a fantastic experience that the content or tools I will create will be judged by people from Facebook, apart from that how small contributions can help shape the future of world.

A few sentences on why your project so important/impactful: In this era of technology fighting fire with fire is no solution as propagandists invest a lot of effort while fighting dirty. India being the country having diversity in culture and religion is prone to the propaganda. We used the different unique methods in educating the people through our project that mainly focused  on subverting the efforts of propaganda by involving the influential public figures in our campaign like Professors, RJ’s and other sections of society having an impactful follower count. We involved the public at large and student community in particular to educate other sections of society against spread of fake news through online pledge, which included a pledge to promote education and thoughtful debate and not to spread the misinformation intentionally. Various contests, like a writing competition, was held to educate the masses and involve them actively in this campaign.