It is pertinent to note here that #PowerlessQueen is the world’s first digital chess game. Designed, created and launched by WATConsult, the campaign was an attempt to spread awareness about the plight of women within the Indian society and raise donations for Project Nanhi Kali to empower education for the girl child.

In this version of the game, the first player had a Powerless Queen to play with – a queen who couldn’t move; the second player’s queen, on the other hand, was the powerful one. Queen being the most powerful piece on the chessboard, #PowerlessQueen was a metaphor on how real-life queens, i.e. the women in India, are not allowed to explore their basic rights to education, which leads them to becoming powerless.

Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO, said, “We are very proud to have achieved this prestigious global award for our #PowerlessQueen campaign. The campaign is a reflection of the growing creative capability at WATConsult and our drive to do path breaking work. We hope to win at more such global awards in the coming days.”

The campaign was widely covered across many national and international news platforms including print and broadcast. It also created a lot of buzz on social media, thus, garnering donations worth 40,000 hours of education for girls. The challenge was accepted by many renowned personalities from the chess fraternity wherein many ace players, too, lost the game. The idea highlighted the fact that it is not easy to win in a game of chess – also a metaphor in society, clearly hinting that societies cannot win if their queens (women) are not empowered.

For records, PIAF Awards have been bringing a new perspective on creativity since 2010 with its top class jury which judges entries in all categories with the same intensity. The awards show is known for its high standards for the judging that preclude an awards inflation. Each year, approximately 50 awards are given out at PIAF.

This Article is related to:
Woman’s Day 2018, International Women’s Day, Powerless Queen, Project Nanhi Kali, K. C. Mahindra Education Trust, Naandi Foundation, WATConsult, Underprivileged Girls, GRAND PRIX, Prague International Advertising Festival

The ‘Queen’ is the most powerful piece in the game of chess, a two-player strategy board game that once originated in India in the 6th Century. And yet, atypically, those very ‘Queens’ still stand powerless and violated in 21st century India.

Therefore, in an attempt to shed light on how a society fails when it leaves its ‘Queens’ helpless and feeble, Project Nanhi Kali partnered with WATConsult, the digital and social media agency from Dentsu Aegis Network India, to launch an innovative campaign titled, ‘Powerless Queen’.

To spread awareness about the long neglected cause, a digital version of the Chess game has been created wherein, the first player’s ‘Queen’ is designed to be ‘powerless’ and does not move at all while the second player’s ‘Queen’ has all her powers, thus making the first player realise how difficult it is to win a game with the ‘Powerless Queen’.

To support the campaign, Tania Sachdev, an Indian chess player who holds The Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE, also known as World Chess Federation) titles of The International Master and The Woman Grandmaster has also come on board. She is delivering the campaign message though this video, which went live on 7th March.

Speaking about the same, Rajiv Dingra, Founder and CEO, WATConsult said, “As an agency we are very proud of this campaign. Chess is a game of power and we thought of utilising this game to let people realise how in the 6th century we made the Queen the most powerful and yet in the 21st century we fail to empower women. It is an absolute challenge to win any battle with a ‘Powerless Queen’ and this campaign illustrates just that on Woman’s Day.”

Apart from spreading the message, Tania Sachdev is also challenging people to play the digital version of the Chess game on the microsite by taking the ‘Powerless Queen Challenge’. The microsite enables people to accept the challenge, play the game and donate to Project Nanhi Kali to empower the women of tomorrow.

Sheetal Mehta, Trustee and Executive Director, Project Nanhi Kali and K. C. Mahindra Education Trust, said, “We are happy to partner with WATConsult for this innovative campaign, the Powerless Queen. We support campaigns that give out a message about the importance of ensuring equality for women and it is a win-win situation given our objective is to educate and empower girls.”

Deprived of her basic human rights the Powerless Queen is the grave reality of our society today.

Microsite: www.PowerlessQueen.com

About Project Nanhi Kali:
Anand Mahindra, the current Chairman Mahindra Group, founded Project Nanhi Kali in 1996 with a strong belief that educated women would not only contribute to the economy but also issues of population and social evils like the dowry system and child marriage would reduce as more women are educated. Apart from the objective of impacting the nation’s development through education of the girl child, Anand Mahindra also wanted to encourage Indians to ’give back’ in a focused manner. Hence Project Nanhi Kali was designed as a sponsorship support programme which allows individuals to participate and support the education of a girl child in India.

Project Nanhi Kali is jointly managed by the K. C. Mahindra Education Trust and Naandi Foundation that supports the education of underprivileged girls. Since inception, Project Nanhi Kali has empowered and changed the destinies of 3,10,000 underprivileged girls in poor rural, remote tribal and urban areas across 11 states in India. The programme provides 360 degree support that ensures free after school tuitions on every school day, for Language and Maths. In addition a school supplies kit comprising of a schoolbag, shoes, books, uniforms and even feminine hygiene material is provided to every Nanhi Kali, every year, thereby allowing her to go to school with dignity. Project Nanhi Kali evenworks with parents and communities to counsel them of the importance of sending their girls to school.

This year, we introduced two new initiatives – The Yellow Tablet which brings technology to underprivileged girls by providing them with Digital tablets preloaded with in-built English and Maths lessons in audio and video, enabling girls in secondary school to study both, in the classroom and later in their homes. The 2nd initiative are the N Star Centreswhere adolescent girls are given access to a safe place where they are taught digital and financial literacy, life skills and spoken English. We believe it is critical that they receive support at this juncture as they are the most vulnerable to dropping out of the education cycle at this stage.

Impact:
The campaign which started of as a Women’s Day initiative, has received support from international chess players. The campaign has reached out to more than 3.6 million people with over 50 million impressions and interestingly over 5000+ conversations were initiated – in less then 24 hours.

Some of the renowned names like Indian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, ‘Viswanathan Anand’; two-time United States Women’s Champion and the FIDE title holder of Woman Grandmaster, Jennifer Shahade; renowned Indian fashion photographer, Atul Kasbekar; Russian-born Dutch Chess Grandmaster, Anish Giri and many more have been tweeting the campaign, playing the game and sharing the campaign to spread awareness about empowering women.

Not only this but the campaign has also lead Nanhi Kali receive an encouraging amount of donation.

This Ad is related to:
Woman’s Day 2018, International Women’s Day, Powerless Queen, Project Nanhi Kali, K. C. Mahindra Education Trust, Naandi Foundation, WATConsult, Underprivileged Girls