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Google India announced a new social campaign called #ReachForTheSky, in association with MARD initiative. The joint campaign will look to build support from existing Internet users and encourage more women to learn and use the Internet to excel in their lives.
Rajan Anandan, vice-president & managing director, says, "India is on its way to become the second-largest Internet population in the world but usage of Internet amongst women is lower than most countries in the world. There are 616 million women in India. Close to half of the women are below 25 years. Empowering young women with information and Internet-related tools could transform India's future. For the first time, women Internet-users growth rate in urban India has exceeded men in the last one year."
Sandeep Menon, head of marketing, Google India, says, "Our mission is to help bring 50 million women online. In the last nine months, we have reached over 1 million women across five states, covering 30 cities and 55 small towns. We have imparted basic training to over 45,000 girl students and over 5,000 teachers. We have the HWGO Internet Cart, a mobile way of reaching women in villages who find it difficult to travel for our sessions and will roll it in more states." MARD drives the youth to think of women as equal and to think of girls as equal, with a very simple charter that is in the form of a poem that can be accessed online and shared with schools, colleges and friends.
