Selfie campaign pledges to educate 58,000 girls

After a successful three-week stint across three Indian cities, the #Selfies4School campaign received over 5,800 selfies, exceeding their initial target of 2,500 selfies, a statement said Thursday.

As part of the campaign that endorsed educating the girl child to avert early marriage, people clicked selfies and uploaded them along with a message under the hashtag #selfies4school on Facebook and Twitter to show their support. For every picture uploaded, 10 girls would be sent to school.

The campaign, an initiative of NGO Breakthrough and Vodafone Foundation - which is funding the education of girls through the NGO Educate Girls - was organised across Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

According to the statement, the foundation has decided to match the pledge of 5,800 selfies received from across India by sending 58,000 girls to school.

"Gender disparity continues to remain a significant barrier to education in our country. Without proper education, thousands of girls suffer from extremely low literacy rates, poor health outcomes and alarming rates of child marriage," said Breakthrough's vice president and country director, Sonali Khan, in the statement.

Educate Girls works in several districts of Rajasthan towards ensuring quality education for girls from the most marginalised communities.

"This campaign has touched the right chord while establishing a critical need for education for girls, who are otherwise denied education and often forced into early marriage," said Safeena Hussain, founder of Educate Girls.

According to the statement, the online campaign which concluded Oct 11, the international day of the girl child, received the support of over 2.61 lakh users.