Buy a Girl: An Anti Child Marriage Campaign

The Girl Store is sponsored by Mahindra Foundation U.S.A and Project Nanhi Kali, an initiative of Indian business tycoon Anand Mahindra. The project is aimed at providing education to girl children and it works with over 20 non-governmental organizations to support around 75,000 girls across the country. The cause is well-intended and noble. But was it really necessary to use sexual allusions to drum up support for their cause?

Sheetal Mehta, the executive director at Project Nanhi Kali explained this as “We wanted it to be deliberately provocative. But we mean well. We aren’t trying to shock somebody, or rather you can say, we are shocking them into doing good.”

Sheetal said that their website received mixed feedback since it launched last year.  She added that it didn’t go down well one blogger, for instance, who slammed the initiative as a “Cheap Trick. Bad Message. Questionable Product.”

Mehta said “Some were stunned by the name, some said we are promoting child trafficking. But we are doing exactly opposite. We are saying ‘buy a girl her life back.”

However, overall, she said that the response has been good. She said that since the project first launched last year, they received donations from over 1000 people, enough to sponsor the education of around 450 girls.