Women Transforming India Awards 2016: Celebrating Women Change Makers
On International Women’s Day 2016, NITI Aayog, in partnership with MyGov and the United Nations in India, launched the first-ever ‘Women Transforming India’, an online contest to crowdsource stories of women making a difference, in form of essays.
Women Transforming India was launched with the aim to celebrate the indomitable spirit of women working tirelessly to empower communities and transform India. The campaign is also consistent with the government’s renewed commitment to advance gender equality. The many interventions, including Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Sukanya Samridhi Yojana and Janani Suraksha Yojana are testimony to its resolve to empower its girls and women, and tackle discrimination.
Launched on 8 March, the contest was hosted on MyGov.in and ran till 15 April. The contest was supported by an extensive outreach campaign, including social media – #WomenTransform, print ads in local newspapers, talks on MyGov, posters and more. A number of prominent individuals including Smriti Irani, Minister of Textiles, Dr Arvind Panagariya, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog; Saina Nehwal, Olympic medalist in Badminton, Sania Mirza, UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, Aishwarya Dhanush, UN Women Advocate for Gender Equality, Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator delivered special messages in support of the campaign, which were shared extensively on social media.
Stories came pouring in…
The campaign received nearly 1,000 entries of exceptional girls and women across India who are breaking new ground by empowering themselves or others. After a rigorous process of shortlisting, 25 stories were put to poll on MyGov to select the top 12 stories.
A high-powered jury comprising of Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog; Arvind Panagariya, Vice Chairman, NITI Aayog; Yuri Afanasiev, UN Resident Coordinator; Chanda Kochhar, CEO, ICICI Bank; Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman, Biocon and Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO, MyGov also ranked each of the 25 stories.
Finally, 12 winners were declared based on the combined score of the jury and the online poll.