In India, instead of being sent to school, girls are often made to help with daily household chores. Since this is part of their upbringing, girls accept it as normal. Not just the society, but even the little girls assume that doing household chores is all they are meant to do. As a result, their confidence, and self-worth takes a huge beating and these girls never realise their potential. This would change if girls were sent to school. Here more than maths or science, the most important thing they would learns is that they matter. The brief was to create awareness about the need for girls to go to school and raise donations for the NGO Nanhi Kali, so that they can help more and more girls to get educated.

The film draws parallels between two Lajjos - a young village girl and her neighbour’s buffalo. As the story unfolds, we see how these two have more in common than just their name. Narrated from the buffalo’s point of view, the film highlights how they both work long, hard and selflessly for their respective families. Unless something changes, they will end up staying beasts of burden. For the girl, education is what can bring about this change. While many wouldn’t feel anything strange with a girl doing household chores, depicting the similarities between a girl and a buffalo, from the latter’s perspective, made it an impactful film.

Female literacy rates in India are very low. They stand at 65% (national level) and 46% (rural level) – Census 2011. According to an UNICEF report in 2020, around 10 million girls are expected to drop out of secondary school. This is because the society, the parents of girl children and sadly even most of the girls, believe that a girl’s primary role is to look after her family. And our audience too, was part of that society.

To pierce this apathy, we chose to have as our narrator a beast of burden – the buffalo. Hearing a buffalo empathise with and highlight the similarities between itself and a little girl helped break through the audience’s apathy. It not only made the film emotional, but also helped people realise the importance of sending girls to school where they can learn the most important lesson – that they matter.

The film released on Nanhi Kali’s YouTube channel and other social media like META, LinkedIn, Hotstar, Twitter, Inshorts, among others. Shorter edits were broadcasted across Times Network TV channels. The film was also screened at prominent cinemas across 3 Indian cities. These, and other collaterals (social media posts, paid promotions) ran across media for a month – March 10th to March 31st, 2022.

The campaign reached 25 million+ viewers across social media platforms, including but not limited to YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Hotstar. Total campaign impressions earned were 147 million+ and the film was organically shared extensively by celebrities and content publishers like The Logical Indian, The Better India, The Quint, Sheroes, etc.

Total clicks to Nanhi Kali’s website increased by 200% while YouTube subscribers grew by 100%. The organization also received 50% more donations during the campaign period, as compared to the month before.