Girl Rising India campaign to change mindset: Freida

‘Girl Rising India’, a part of global campaign, is about changing the mindset and bringing in behavioural changes among people to promote girls’ education, actress Freida Pinto said here as hundreds of Indian-Americans gathered at the American Capital to support the initiative. “We really do hope that it ends up starting a conversation for the behavioural change... there is going to be no progress if there is no change in the mindset (about how people think about girls in India),” Pinto told reporters at a <g data-gr-id="21">red carpet</g> welcome for the campaign’s benefit gala last night to raise funds for the initiative. Pinto, one of the India team members of ‘Girl Rising’, however, said that the grass-root level campaign is not going to change the mindset overnight and it will take some time.

But this is an effort worth starting now, the Slumdog Millionaire star said. Bollywood actor Priyanka Chopra who was previously scheduled to co-host the <g data-gr-id="19">benefit</g> gala along with Pinto but could not attend because of her last minute pressing engagement.

Pinto said the campaign would be launched in India soon from two states Rajasthan and Bihar. For <g data-gr-id="24">this</g> the ‘Girl Rising India’ campaign has tied up with Indian government and a network of grass-root NGOs to work towards this massive awareness campaign. “It’s a long-term investment,” she said.

“The vision of the campaign is to have all girls in India have equal rights and inspire parents to dream big for their girls what they do for their sons,” said Nidhi Dubey, country director of ‘Girl Rising India’. “We really want to work on a behavioural change campaign that addresses that mindset,” she said.