My Local Guides’ journey started when I was in Bangalore in 2017 and in search for pizza, landed in a residential area. I already had traveled a long way and it was disappointing to be not able to eat the food I wanted. I asked the locals there. They told me how everyday they meet 2-3 people struggling to find this place that didn’t exist. When I asked why anyone hasn’t done something about it, they had no idea what to do. I also didn’t know what I could do as a common person except posting about it on social media. But how many people who were in genuine need would get benefited from a post hiding under a sea of information on social media.
Exploring further, I realized I could do something about it, for example edit the information, mark it as ’ the place doesn’t exist’ etc. It gave me so much satisfaction to discover a platform to deal with spams, false claims of businesses and wrong photos. I started contributing to the platform rigorously. It took me another 8 months to finally discover about the Local Guides Program after this incident.
For me, it was and still is all about contributing and helping people so that they don’t feel helpless like I did few years back. The perks are there but the identity and belonging you get here is unparalleled. With Google Maps and LGs everywhere, I feel like no new territory is unknown and scary to me, just unexplored. The friends I made at the event are to be cherished forever. I have attended many conferences, been part of different groups in multiple fields, but the Local Guides Community is my favorite and the people involved in this are super cool. It has simply changed the way I perceived the world before and that LGs are making the world a better place.
Thank you so much everyone for doing what you do and inspiring me without even knowing.
