Sri Vijaya Puram, August 13: The Andaman and Nicobar Administration has launched a series of Awareness-cum-Orientation Workshops across the Islands to encourage students, youth and emerging digital creators to participate in the ‘Gems of India Challenge 2026’, a national initiative aimed at showcasing local culture, heritage, tourism and history through original digital content.
The workshops are being organised to familiarise participants with the challenge and guide them through the registration and content submission process. As part of the initiative, awareness programmes were conducted on Monday at Jawaharlal Nehru Rajkeeya Mahavidyalaya (JNRM), Andaman College (ANCOL) and Andaman Law College in Sri Vijaya Puram.
The sessions were conducted by resource persons from the Information, Publicity and Tourism Department and My Bharat. They introduced students to the ‘Gems of India Challenge’, launched by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, which seeks to identify, nurture and promote grassroots digital creators from across the country.
During the one-hour workshops, participants were briefed on the objectives of the initiative, the registration process through MyWAVES and the procedure for submitting digital content online. Resource persons also conducted demonstrations of the online registration and submission process and responded to queries raised by students during interactive sessions.
The challenge encourages participants to create authentic digital stories highlighting the culture, heritage, tourism, traditions, history and distinctive achievements of their respective districts. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands has been selected as one of six States and Union Territories included in the pilot phase of the initiative.
Under the programme, participants are required to create and upload original digital content of one to three minutes through the MyWAVES section of the WAVES OTT platform. The submission window for the pilot phase opened on August 1 and will remain open until August 31, 2026.
The Administration has scheduled additional Awareness-cum-Orientation Workshops at Tagore Government College of Education on August 13; Teachers’ Training Institute, DBRAIT, Dollygunj, and ITI, Sri Vijaya Puram, on August 14; Panchayat Hall, Rangat, on August 17; Mayabunder College on August 18; and Multipurpose Hall, Mayabunder, on August 19. Each session will cover an introduction to the challenge, registration through MyWAVES, interaction with participants and a demonstration of the online registration and submission process.
The Administration has appealed to students, youth, aspiring filmmakers, vloggers, photographers, storytellers and other creative individuals across the Islands to participate in the initiative by submitting their original entries through the MyWAVES section of the WAVES OTT platform before the August 31 deadline.
