See the Spot: #PowerlessQueen

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 also came on board.

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, 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.”

The project has been gaining massive momentum on social media, in the launch week itself.

The campaign has reached out to more than 3.6 million people, within 24 hours of the launch. On day one itself over 50 million impressions and over 5000+ conversations were initiated.

The campaign, which was launched by Tania Sachdev has caught attention of global chess players including, Indian Chess Grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion and the current World Rapid Chess Champion – Viswanathan Anand, two-time United States Women’s Champion and the FIDE title holder of Woman Grandmaster – Jennifer Shahade, 3 times Hungarian chess champion – Anna Rudolf, Russian-born Dutch Chess Grandmaster – Anish Giri along with well-known Indian fashion photographer, Atul Kasbekar.

Anna Rudolf has been so impressed by the initiative that she has uploaded a video of the same on her YouTube channel. In her video Anna has suggested that #powerlessqueen is such a great initiative that it should be global and not just Indian.

Within couple of days of the launch, Nanhi Kali has received donation to fund 40,000 hours of girl child education.

Source – AdAge India Bureau

Dated   – March 12,2018