From ask to action

^{Main image: Founders; Ahmed Faid and Nii Lartey}

When Ahmed Faid borrowed his eldest sister’s camera during a university break in 2011, he little realised this simple act of rebellion would become a blueprint for reimagining social action. 

Growing up in the King’s Cross neighbourhood of London during an era of rising knife crime and widespread youth disconnection, Faid had often observed a profound gap between his community’s reality and its representation by the mainstream media. “I would turn on the news and there was never anything saying what us young people were feeling,” he recalls. “Then came the riots – and one of the reasons was because young people were fed up.” 

Faid cites those riots (sparked by the August 2011 police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham) as a turning point. He notes that young people in London were already facing additional mounting frustrations that year, with a sharp increase in university tuition fees and a general sense of social and economic tension. “I was concerned about how young people were being represented by the press,” he says. “I wanted to pick up a camera to document the stories and voices of young people who wanted answers and change.”  

So, borrowed camera in hand, he walked onto the streets of London and began asking questions. 

Patient listening 

That first day on the street taught Faid a crucial lesson about authentic connection – it takes patience. In busy London, three hours passed before any of the strangers he approached agreed to be interviewed. But he persevered, asking the same question over and over: “If you could change one thing in society, what would it be?” The answers he received were wildly different, ranging from “more love and understanding” to “less immigration”. 

This diversity of responses reshaped his understanding of what it would take to create genuine social change: real open listening to other perspectives. “I realised it was important, because so much of what we have now – Trump, Brexit – is because we don’t listen enough to people outside our own little bubbles.” This insight would eventually become the foundation for Dose of Society: Real People, Real Stories, a digital storytelling and social media platform which Faid co-founded with college friend Nii Lartey.  

“We started Dose of Society in 2017, because we felt ordinary voices weren’t being heard,” says Faid. “The media often only spotlights celebrities or influencers.” Faid and Lartey wanted the platform to give young people in particular a space to share their authentic voices and personal perspectives on life, community and current affairs. The idea was to capture raw, unfiltered reflections from youth. 

Dose of Society gives a voice to everyday people – marginalised groups and communities that are often overlooked by mainstream media – through the creation of short, impactful videos that highlight perspectives ranging from street-level conversations to global humanitarian issues. At its core, the platform uses authentic digital storytelling to foster genuine connection and understanding. It does this with its interviews by prioritising authentic listening over performative engagement – crucial for starting conversations that can lead to more profound social connections and actions, not just feed the mill of passive online entertainment. 

Lartey, who left traditional journalism because he felt “pigeon-holed” and unable to share unfiltered community stories, is not surprised that their approach has resonated. “When it comes to news, it’s just very filtered, there’s a lot of bias.” Faid and Lartey also saw their work as representative of a generational shift, a desire to move away from extracting quotes for predetermined narratives, and towards creating space for authentic community voices to drive social agendas. 

“At its core, the platform uses authentic digital storytelling to foster genuine connection and understanding.”

Sustainable missions 

Today, Dose of Society has more than 6 million followers across platforms, with advocates in 97 countries. The company received Snapchat investment in 2019 and now works with companies (including Netflix and Valentino) using the lessons learnt from their street interviews to help humanise brands, making them more relatable across social media. But this partnership has posed a fundamental challenge: how to maintain authentic local connection while operating globally and for profit? 

Faid says the connection between Dose of Society’s street interviews and corporate partnerships lies in purpose and sustainability. The grassroots work, the raw, unpaid interviews from the streets, are “where the heart of Dose of Society lives, where we listen to real people, amplify unheard voices, and build authentic community connections”. The corporate collaborations with brands like Netflix help fund that mission, “ensuring we can continue capturing and sharing stories that don’t usually make it to mainstream platforms”. In essence, “the commercial work sustains the social mission, while the social mission gives our corporate work authenticity and meaning”.