Nowadays,
social media platforms have become an important part of everyone's life, people
are leveraging the power of social media and earn through sharing informational
content with other people.
On
the other hand, as the internet has reached villages, rural societies are
finding ways to showcase and monetize their unique food cultures to audiences
across the world, using platforms like YouTube and Facebook.
Needless
to say, 'You Tube' is such a medium who appreciate and pay talent without any
discrimination of caste, community or boundaries.
Bangladesh's
Shimulia village (popularly known as ‘YouTube Village’) is one of them who made their unique identity with the support of YouTube by creating AroundMeBD
channel, which highlights the village's cooks and reveals the daily life of a
community living in western Bangladesh.
 |
| AroundMeBD filming a video for their Youtube channel at the village last December |
How
channel 'AroundMeBD' started,
In
2017, a young man of Shimulia village named Liton Ali created a YouTube channel
out of passion. He was then living in Dhaka, had no camera, no editing skills,
nothing. He just wanted to make videos with his mobile camera. So, he started
documenting what’s happening around him and uploading them on the channel.
There
was no particular topic for the videos. He used to capture the things that made
him feel good, including busy fish-markets, roadside stalls selling
earthenware, stitching works at a garments factory, fishing in local ponds,
local snake charmers, bustling markets, and so on.
Everything
that’s happening around and getting his attention, he was capturing and sharing
it online. That’s why he named his channel ‘AroundMeBD'.
When
his channel started earning from YouTube Liton planned to do something
big something for his native village Shimulia as he always wanted to
help his people. Liton decided to use AroundMeBD to showcase cooking videos
based out of his village; then he talked to his uncle Delwar Hossain, who lives
in the village, about his plan. He told about his interest in making cooking
videos on a large scale for villagers and sharing the entire process online;
his uncle loved the idea.
 |
| Delwar Hussain, a 40-year-old schoolteacher from Shimulia, helps run the Youtube channel AroundMeBD. |
He
said that his uncle told him that would attract participants and viewers. “At
first we thought of it as a picnic, like we will cook and eat the food and make
videos about it,” Hussain said. “We never anticipated that these videos would
be able to generate millions of views in such a short period of time.”
Finally,
Liton came to his native village Shimulia and, with his uncle, gathered the
villagers for his cooking project. The idea was simple — the food would be
cooked by the villagers and for the villagers. They would record the entire
process and upload it to his AroundMeBD channel.
AroundMeBD's
recipes are never the same. They cook different types of foods, including
chicken roast, polao, biriyani, big sea fish, beef tehari, delicious curry,
sweetmeats, cake, pithas, bakery items, and more. They also love to do experiments
with different traditional and unique foods as well. Everything is done under
the open sky.
The
Videos Went Viral,
Within
just two years of initiating the cooking project in 2018, the channel grew
exponentially and reached upto 3.25M subscribers.
Villagers
post videos of making traditional Bangladeshi food on YouTube. The YouTube
channel ‘Village Food Secrets’ has 3.5 million subscribers, while the ‘Village
Cooking’ channel has 15 million subscribers. The videos of both these channels
have been viewed billions of times. The most popular video got more than 63M
views; in which a group of women cooking for the whole village, that is, for
nearly 400 people.
At
the same time, AroundMeBD also has more than four million subscribers. On this
channel, women teach how to cook fish, meat, and other food. Channel's
success on the internet has created a whole new economy in Shimulia.
 |
| Fruits and spices prepared by women of the village during Ramadan:Image AroundMeBD |
These
people show their rural culture and their daily lives to the world through
traditional cooking through their YouTube channels. Now they have established
their village on the world map with the help of YouTube.
Now,
every week they make three to four videos. Men and women dressed in the same
cloth do the cutting, washing, and cooking. Many others help to get the job
done perfectly. Two videographers carefully record each and every moment.
Liton’s uncle coordinates the overall activities. Every three to four days a
week, they feed 500–1000 villagers for free.
As
the channel’s popularity has grown, Liton and Hussain have hired people in the
village to plan the shoots and manage the crowds that come to eat, as well as
delegated responsibility, to make the channel a self-sustaining endeavor. Liton
and Hussain changed the lives of people in a whole village through this you
tube channel; without being selfish. The channel now employs around 50 workers,
including 17 women, who feature in the videos and run the show.
The
success of the channel has drawn in sponsorship opportunities.
Hussain says that the channel has so far received at least 20
sponsorship offers, including from Pran Foods, one of the largest food
companies in Bangladesh. “But we refused all of them, as we wanted to keep our
videos authentic,” he said. “I know sponsorship would have gotten us more
money, but it would have compromised the simplicity and authenticity of our
videos.”(Courtesy: rest of world)
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