Javed Akhtar

You have already seen the Bell Bajao Cause Ambassador Boman Irani’s call to action.

The second in our series of celebrity champion voices is the veteran lyricist and script, dialog and story writer from Bollywood, Mr. Javed Akhtar.

When asked about domestic violence, he starts out by hitting hard at the very terminology of this issue. Domestic violence according to him is not a strong enough term that barely represents the horror of this issue. He says we should rather just use the word, ‘wife beating’

Another very important point he makes is that a true identity of a man is revealed in front of those who are weaker than him. If a man is violent to his wife because she is dependent on him financially or socially that means the true identity of that man is violent. It is possible that in front of the world he puts a nice face. But we must know that any man who raises his hands against a woman cannot be a good human being, it is just impossible.

He therefore calls out to the society to boycott and shun all such men who are abusive to their spouses. It is never a personal matter he says and we must collectively give out the message that abusive people are not acceptable in the society. As a call to action he specifically says that, if you know anybody who is abusive just break all relationship with him.

We are thankful to Mr Javed Akhtar for lending his voice to this pertinent issue and for being a Bell Bajao Cause Champion.

You too can be a champion voices and get a cool HTML badge for your website. Visit here for more.

Breakthrough Rights Advocate, Sarita from UP, India

Sarita took the Breakthrough training in Nov’09. Before the training she had never heard of domestic violence or gender issue. She knew that women get beaten up but didn’t know how to articulate that as a rights violation and didn’t know what to do about it. After the training she felt empowered.

One of the direct impacts of the training was when she heard of violence happening in a house in her neighbourhood, she went to that house, rang the bell and asked for some tea leaves. Sarita says that since then there has been no violence in that house.

Sarita now is an active Breakthrough Rights Advocate who is busy disseminating the information she obtained from the Breakthrough training to more youth groups. When asked how can domestic violence be ended Sarita said we should give these trainings to more women so that they can become self dependent and speak up against violence in their homes and community.

Story created by Rights Reporter Ashish

If you know anybody who rang the bell send us their story in a 2 min video format or as in text format of 200 words to bell_bajao@breakthrough.tv

The three TV spots created by Ogilvy & Mather featuring campaign ambassador popular actor Boman Irani  has not only reached 132 million people through television, radio and press in India they have also had unprecedented impact across the Globe.

Inspired by our videos artists from Pakistan replicated them and created 3 similar videos which were most probably aired via Geo TV Pakistan. See the video below (Video 2, Video 3)

Check the original Bell Bajao Videos on the Media downlaod page.

Although the 3 TV spots uploaded on Youtube by Fiveradios are said to directed by a certain Imran Ahmed and carry the official logo of Geo TV Pakistan and officially no credits have been given to us, we wish to take this in a positive spirit. It is heartening to know that we have been able to influence the creative minds in Pakistan which is also a high prevalence area so far as Domestic Violence is considered.

Earlier we have been appreciated for our efforts by noted Pakistani journalist Ms Sana Saleem on Dawn Blog where she mentioned how our Bell Bajao ads are a examples of how social intervention can go a long way in curbing domestic violence.

Going farther, Cesar Robles, Communication Officer of Spanish organization Paz y Desarrollo (Vietnam) wrote to us about how our campaign and the resource material available on this site has inspired him and his team to create their own video. See below the said video.

It is great to see such impact of our work and to know how commonly runs the thread of domestic violence through various regions, country, religion, class. All that is needed is to connect these pieces and make Bell Bajao a truly global campaign giving a clarion call to men and boys all over the world to Ring the Bell and Bring Domestic Violence to a Halt.

This is to announce that both ‘Bell Bajao’, ‘Ring the Bell’ and all related ads created by Ogilvy and Mather are registered property of Breakthrough. Anybody using them in their campaign are requested to acknowledge the source in such words, “Inspired by Breakthrough’s Bell Bajao Campaign.”

Prabha Singh is also one of our Rights Advocates

Kaamini lives in a slum near the Shivaji Nagar area of Bangalore, India. She along with the help of few more girls, all of who have atteded a breakthrough leadership training, took action against a man who used to always get drunk and create nuisance in the neighborhood.

Following is a video story on Kaamini’s breakthrough, her courage and determination to make the environment violence free.

The video tells the story well,  here we would just quote Kaamin from the interview, “Earlier we used to be afraid of police and used to leave these matters to men but after attending Breakthrough training we feel empowered so we decided to take it up ourselves with police.”

They persisted for four months and finally police took action against the man.

This was Kaamini’s story of how she rang the bell. What is yours?

Here is the first video by Rights Reporter Ashish from Lucknow. Edited by Breakthrough media team.

In the video:

Mehrunissa and Tarannum are two Muslim women in Lucknow, who teach child labourers in a local school. They talk about ideas of education and exposure among lower middle class Muslim societies, their own experiences, and prejudice faced by their friends and peers. They talk about their mothers and the remarkable perseverance they showed in educating their daughters. Through anecdotes, stories, hearsay, jokes and conversation we are able to get a glimpse into the world of these women and become aware of deep rooted prejudices that still exist about educating women.