Post crossing: The Exchanging of Postcards in the New Age
Posted by Strategic Communications, JGI Group on 31 October 2017

In a world where people are constantly connected virtually and are always networking and have access to breakneck internet speed, the idea of writing a postcard may sound pretty redundant. For our yesteryear generation, writing letters or sending postcards was one of the media to communicate with their loved ones or peers. Though the letter or postcard would take several days or months to reach their destination, it was their hopes and dreams they carried in their words that transcended time.

The idea of exchanging postcards has not completely fizzled out. Even today, ardent fans of postcard have kept this legacy alive by participating in an online project called “Postcrossing”.

What is Postcrossing?

Postcrossing allows people to send and receive colorful postcards from anywhere around the world. Although it started as a side project, it has now snowballed into a bigger reality, gaining international success. The tagline for the project is "send a postcard and receive a postcard back from a random person somewhere in the world!” The participants are commonly referred to as postcrossers, send postcards to other members of the community and receive postcards back from other random postcrossers.This maintains the factor of a pleasant surprise as no one knows who they are going to receive the postcard from.

How did it start?

It was started in 2005, by Paulo Magalhães, a Portuguese computer systems engineer. Magalhaes who enjoyed sending and receiving mails, particularly postcards, created a website for his hobby. Having an interest in the element of surprise that a mailbox is, Magalhes soon realized that the idea of exchanging postcards was still popular and in high demand.

A Postcrosser at JHS

Harsh Parekh, a vibrant student of Grade 3 of Jain Heritage School (one of the best CBSE schools in Bangalore) is also a part of this worldwide phenomenon. He is a part of the Post crossing family with over a 25 cards to his collection from over 20 countries all around the world. He has received postcards from different parts of the world like Germany, Netherlands, England, Taiwan, Belarus. Paris, the USA, Czech Republic, Finland, Thailand, Russia, Japan, Namibia, Scotland, Prague zoo and more. Harsh has made friends from all around the world and is very excited about participating in Postcrossing. His favorite is an elephant postcard and he thoroughly enjoys the anticipation and excitement of sending and receiving a postcard. For students interested in Postcrossing, he would like to invite more participants to be part of a healthy and interactive activity.

What started as a mere timepass transpired into a unique hobby which has inspired many of his friends, classmates and other students from the school to become active Postcrossers. He was introduced to this rare hobby by his father who himself is an active postcrosser after coming across this unique activity in Google.

Not only students but the primary coordinator of Jain Heritage School also takes an active part in Post crossing herself, thus, serving as an inspiration to students to participate. She says, “It is a wonderful experience to receive postcards from places so far. It also helps a lot in learning about new people and their countries.”

For those who share the love for colorful picture postcards, you can check out Harsh Parekh's Postcrossing project.

Image courtesy: https://www.postcrossing.com/