We want to hear your VOICE!

Note: Please feel free to re-post/tweet/share Halabol’s "call for writers" in full elsewhere on the web to spread the word.

Halabol Voices aims to bring you views on news, interesting opinions, arguments from all sides of on going debates and features that’ll engage you week after week. This endeavor to bring mass attention and engagement to socially relevant issues and topics, however, is not ours alone. 

Halabol is all for and about putting YOUR voice in the platform for you to believe in yourself and your cause a lot more; to make believers out of your friends, family, followers, colleagues and acquaintances; to viral your voice on social media and everywhere else in India.
 
So writers (aspiring or published) and social/intellectual musers, wield your fingers on those keys and inspire us with your socially relevant and development focused take exposition on environment, animal welfare, gender, education…the works. The issues listed in Halabol are broad categories and not an exhaustive list, so we’ll give you all creative license (as long as for social good!) to think out of the box!
 
Previous blogging or publishing experience is not necessary. We sought to give an equal opportunity to all regardless of caste, class, creed, race, religion and region. Currently, this is an unpaid opportunity but Halabol would be interested in converting long term associations into full time positions or recommendations.
 
Halabol only takes original, well researched and articulated submissions and pitches for one article at time (no series please). Please carefully read the guidelines given below.
 

Guidelines for Article Submission

Length - Purely text articles should be between 500-1500 words. If the article’s main focus is on multimedia (video, slideshow, photo essay) or an illustration, the maximum word limit is 300 words. Include your full name, email address, and date of submission at the top of the body. 
 
Language - All submissions must be in English.  Mention of lines from any other language must be in italics with the English translation in brackets.
 
Title – Make it brief and catchy in such a way that it effectively attracts a visitors’ attention and arouses their curiosity towards the subject matter. Using popular catch phrases and references is common practice (“To kill a dying bird”) or you could highlight the keywords of the article (5000 Tigers Are Missing).
 
Teaser - Keep it short (within 20 words) as a descriptive summary of the post. Alternatively, you may also highlight some part of the article like a statistical finding (“1 in 5 women suffer domestic violence….”) or a quote (“crimes against women will not be tolerated and the offenders will not escape unpunished”, said Chief Minister of Delhi).  
 
Body – This is where the main composition of your blog post should be posted i.e. the introductions, facts, figures, your arguments, quotations etc. Should you wish to share a presentation or a video sourced from another site, then you must copy the embed code from the sourced link and paste it on the body of the article, wherever you’d like it to be placed. While quoting or referring to an article, video, campaign etc. on a website or a blog, it is a good practice to hyperlink the source of your information. Your argument will gain substantive strength making your article credible to be cited in other blogs and websites as a reference as well as to be widely shared on social networking platforms as mass opinion. Use Times New Roman @12pt font, single spaced. Limit paragraph length to three or four sentences. 
 
Attachments (pictures, videos, slideshows) – All text in an article can get monotonous and multimedia elements bring colour and a wider audience to the fore. However, take precaution in titling and crediting it. If the product belongs to you, by all means credit it under your name. However, if you are reposting content from other sites or users, make sure to give copyright credit to the owner as well as a link to their website or work display profile on any other site. Do read Halabol’s ‘Terms of Use’ here.
 
Tagging – The most important part of the blogging experience is to appropriately tag it with the right keywords and terminologies that have been used in the article or are strongly related or connected to it. For e.g. if your article is on wells drying up and the lack of tubewells in a remote village, you may use tags like “save water”, “water conservation”, “rural life” etc. Tagging helps in directing traffic from search engines for specific keyword results to websites and blogs like this one.
 
Categorizing under Issues/Campaigns – Besides you doing us a world of favour by helping the Halabol team to categorize precious and valuable content into their respective issues, YOUR articles and blog pieces will bring YOUR campaigns higher up in support, awareness and change by many notches!

A brief bio of yourself in one paragraph (approx. 50 words) consisting of where you’re from, what you do for work, what you do for fun, etc. (in the body of the article entry).

Please note - Your article will be submitted for review by Halabol editorial team who will get back to you in a standard review period of 3 working days. If this is a submission that you want posted on a specific date, please specify that in the body of the article and submit it a week prior to the desired publishing date.

Questions / Comments?

Please contact editorial@halabol.com if you have any questions or comments regarding the submission or pitch process.