Reach for the sky

• Google launches social campaign #ReachForTheSky with Farhan Akhtar’s MARD Initiative
• Strives to bring 50 million women online in India
• Joint campaign to gather support and encourage everyone to help women to adopt the Internet and excel in their lives

Google on Tuesday announced the launch of a new social campaign called #ReachForTheSky, in association with MARD initiative. The joint campaign launched the website, www.hwgo.in/reach as part of their helping women get online initiative. The campaign was launched with a musical work ‘Chulein Aasmaan’, composed by Salim-Sulaiman and performed live with Farhan Akhtar (singer, writer, performer) and Shraddha pandit (co- lyricist).

Joining hands with Google’s ‘Helping Women Get Online’ initiative, Men Against Rape and Discrimination (MARD) (started by Farhan Akhtar) stands to inspire change in society, to gather support for women empowerment.

Speaking about the importance of getting more women online, Rajan Anandan, VP and managing director, Google India, said, “Empowering the young women population with information and internet related tools could transform India’s future. And I am delighted to share, that for the first time in India, women Internet users’ growth rate in urban India has exceeded men in the last one year. And we need to build on this start, and join the campaign with MARD to encourage more and more women to come online.”

Sharing the details of Google’s helping women get online campaign, Sandeep Menon, head of marketing, Google India, said “Our mission is to help bring 50 million women online in India. In the last nine months we have undertaken a number of initiatives reaching over 1 million women across five states in India, covering 30 cities and 55 small towns. We have reached out to 950 educational institutes spread across these 5 states, imparted basic training to over 45,000 girl students and have trained over 5000 teachers who can continue to educate and inform more girl students. This is a tough task for us and we are constantly learning and adapting to cater to the needs of women in India. We have introduced HWGO Internet Cart, a mobile way of reaching out to women in villages who find it difficult to travel for our training sessions and we will roll it out across rural areas in more states of India.”

“Chulein Aasman” Farhan Akhtar said is a song about female emancipation, “It is a song about freeing women from the roles that they have been coerced into playing for centuries. It highlights the importance of equal opportunity, possibilities and the impact it can have on women. I am thankful to Salim & Sulaiman and Shraddha Pandit for their support and for creating a wonderful composition. I hope people will like it and come forward to support #ReachForTheSky campaign.”

How to participate and join the campaign #ReachForTheSky:

Internet users can go to www.hwgo.in/reach and join as a mentor and help a woman who has never used the Internet through simple lessons on how to get started on the Internet, find information that they want, how to use the Internet to connect and communicate online. Mentors can contribute by sharing their stories across leading social media platforms with #ReachForTheSky and encourage more Internet users to participate.

Internet users can also go to www.therealmard.org and pledge their support. Hashtag #ReachForTheSky across social media platforms.