Lenovo and YUWA partner together to bring cool-tech to rural community

Lenovo, the PC maker and an emerging player in Tablets and Smart phones, launched the ‘Pitch to Her’ campaign in association with YUWA, on the eve of India’s 69^th Independence Day. YUWA is a social development platform for girls based in Jharkhand that imparts training in football, provides free education and creates awareness about social evils like child marriage and domestic violence.  As part of this initiative, Lenovo is calling the brightest minds in India to hack real world issues with technology and propose interesting ideas of change.  Last year, Lenovo cheered for YUWA and brought their story to millions of Indians as the YUWA girls they took on the world’s best in the USA Cup - one of the most reputed international football tournaments for young girls in the world.

The website www.pitchtoher.com will give people across India an opportunity to field innovative and technology ideas to YUWA to improve lives of rural girls and the community in Hutup village, Jharkhand. What’s special is that the entries will be judged by an effervescent bunch of YUWA girls and winners will get an internship funded by Lenovo at YUWA to make these ideas come alive in the real world. Through ‘Pitch to her’, team YUWA is looking to unleash simple, practical yet quirky solutions that can involve anything from art to music to product design or even utility apps that can be implemented within just 4 to 6 weeks. The volunteers can pitch their ideas by registering on the microsite, http://www.pitchtoher.com/pitch-now. Selected people will then be invited to visit Hutup for a sponsored internship with Lenovo YUWA along with a certification.

"This is a great opportunity for people to unleash their creativity and present out-of-the-box ideas that will get them to both, experience a slice of life with the YUWA team at Hutup and be a part of driving change in one of the most disadvantaged parts of the country.  People know the YUWA girls for football, but off the field they're every bit as impressive.  They're changing their own lives and the lives of girls in their communities.  We're thrilled to partner with Lenovo to empower girls to connect them to a wider community, to have some fun and to invite you to join us! Society teaches girls to fit in. YUWA coaches girls to stand out.  Join us by pitching your ideas today." Franz Gastler, Executive Director and Co-Founder of YUWA.

Speaking about this association, Bhaskar Choudhuri, Director, Marketing, Lenovo India said, “We are proud of our association with the YUWA girls. Despite hailing from a small town like Hutup in Jharkhand, they have the required firepower and understand that technology gives them the required platform to achieve their dreams. The primary objective of ‘Pitch to Her’ is to engage young individuals towards empowering the YUWA girls and in a way create an unforgettable, fun experience for these volunteers. ”

The high intensity pitching process kicks off on Independence Day, with a tournament that will be filmed by the YUWA girls using aerial cameras attached to balloons. To make the pitch more powerful and understand the daily challenges faced by the girls, volunteers can interact with the girls via Skype or Google Hangout before making the final submission. Post the submission, the best ideas will be chosen based on practicality and creativity. These ideas will then be implemented over few weeks (need exact time line) by YUWA, the volunteers and the girls themselves. The volunteers get to experience the social structure these girls live in and tackle and thus get sensitized to the world of these simple but strong rural girls of Jharkhand. They will go back with a certification, but more importantly with a sense of accomplishment of being able to make a small but distinct impact to the lives of the YUWA girls.

Besides this, Lenovo has a full-fledged team working in Hutup right now to let the girls experience and learn about computers, internet and science. Lenovo Lab just went online - powered with state-of-the-art YOGA Computers, Tablet Devices and Smart phones. The Lab is introducing the girls to using kits like Makey-Makey and FitBits to unleash their creativity. Over the next 4 says, the girls will build up lots of interesting things using their own hands.

• HUTUP does not even feature on the Internet, so the first thing the girls did is to create a Wikipedia page.
• The girls will get introduced to adventure photography. Since football is a very important part of their life, the girls plan to film the action from up in the sky by rigging up a go-pro camera on a balloon which will fly up in the sky during a friendly match.
• The girls love music. They will learn how to be creative using makey-makey to hook up computers and make a complete band and songs of their own.
• There will be lot more: street view cameras in action, programming on Scratch (the open source coding tool for children from MIT).
• The girls will get introduced to solar power and learn how they harness it easily to overcome the power issues at home. On the eve of Independence Day, they assembled almost 100 solar jars and lit up the entire YUWA House.