Computer manufacturer Lenovo has recently launched a campaign on the web called Pitch To Her, to empower rural girls through technology.
Though this is an India-specific campaign, it has seen a lot of interest from organisations and individuals from across the world – such as UN Women, UN Women Australia, Girls Not Brides, Adrianne Owings, Half the Sky Mvmt and Democracy Watch News.
The campaign is bringing to global attention YUWA, a social development platform for girls based in Jharkhand that imparts training in football, provides free education and creates awareness about social evils.
Hailing from the village of Hutup in Jharkhand, the YUWA girls are from a part of society where six out of ten girls are forced to drop out of school and become child brides. The girls came into the limelight on a national level in 2013 by bagging the bronze medal at the Gasteiz Cup in Spain. In 2014, they were invited to participate in the USA Cup.
This year, the mission taken up by YUWA and Lenovo is to empower the girls with technological knowledge that will propel them towards a smarter world. YUWA India Trust has therefore partnered with Lenovo to launch the national campaign, Pitch to Her, calling the brightest minds in India to enter ideas to ‘hack real world issues’.
As part of the project, the girls are using photography to show the world where they live and what they love. They are using 360-degree cameras to create a Google Maps Street View of their village: The YUWA girls put their village on Google Street View
Hutup does not even feature on the internet, so the first thing the girls are doing is to create a Wikipedia page, describing local facts and famous places, which they then aim to add to a detailed Wiki entry, along with pictures geo-tagged on the map: YUWA Girls Put Hutup on Wikipedia
While the girls were busy being introduced to and tinkering with technology, Lenovo captured their activity, made content articles and shared them for the world to see and invited the social audience to pitch cool ideas to the girls.
By mid-August, the campaign had led to:
This is a strong case of how brands in India and across the globe are moving from baseline to cause or hack marketing and engaging influencers to create real time content. Bhaskar Choudhuri, director, marketing, Lenovo India, said: “We are proud of our association with the YUWA girls. Despite hailing from a small town, they have the required firepower and understand that technology gives them the required platform to achieve their dreams. The primary objective of ‘Pitch to Her’ is to engage young individuals towards empowering the YUWA girls and in a way create an unforgettable, fun experience for these volunteers.”
The campaign ends on September 12.
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