Hyderabad: Drive to wean youth away from alcohol gains favour

Hyderabad: The 'Daawath without Daaru' campaign goes aggressive on the social media in view of the New Year. Using memes, the campaigner, Chegondi Chandrashekar, is trying to attract youth's attention while transforming some of them as teetotallers.

With some 2.5 lakh followers on its Facebook page, Zindagi Images, the 'Daawat without Daaru' (DWD) campaign has remained a popular attraction in this particular category, which is drawing attention of the youth with appealing memes and information about the ill-effects of alcohol consumption.

According to Chandrashekar, as the celebration are about to start on the New Year-eve, DWD is campaigning on the social media. It is part of the efforts to educate and encourage people to keep away from being intoxicated and welcome the year 2021.

"We are asking the people to take New year resolution to quit the habit of drinking, as it is not good for health. With intoxication comes many disadvantages. Our main motive is to reduce alcohol consumption in public gatherings, like birthdays, marriages. Our group of campaigners believes that status of celebration should not be measured by usage of alcohol," he said.

Speaking to The Hans India, Chandrashekar, who is the founder of Zindagi Images, said that he came up with the idea of DWD as alcoholism has become a major social issue. "We need to concentrate on it and there should be a ban on drinking alcohol in public places. Hence, we are running campaigns and even for the New Year-eve we are trying to educate people about the ill-effects of alcohol".

The campaign so far helped some youth to quit alcohol. A few of them also joined the campaign. "It's been 644 days since I quit drinking. I work for a private company and used to spend Rs 4,000-5,000 a month. But when I quit drinking, my way of thinking has hanged. Now when I meet friends, I explain them about DWD. We celebrate without drinking. From my salary I give some amount to an orphanage, thanks to DWD," said R Prabhu, who quit drinking, some two years back.