Celebs with a cause

BANGALORE: A 360 degree Campaign on Women and HIV/AIDS Launched by Breakthrough The majority of HIV/AIDS infected women in India are married women and not commercial sex workers! Breakthrough, an international human rights organization, is launching a 360 degree media campaign, What Kind of Man Are You? to bring public attention to the growing number of married women in India infected by HIV/AIDS.

The campaign has been created by Prasoon Joshi of McCann Erickson and also includes the efforts of key figures like Mandira Bedi, Samir Soni, Arjun Chandramohan Bali, Sujit Sircar and many others. While a lot of effort has gone into spreading awareness about HIV/AIDS among high-risk categories like commercial sex workers, very little has been done to sensitize women in the general public who are vulnerable to the infection from their husbands. According to Prasoon Joshi, Creative Director – South and Southeast Asia, McCann Erickson, “Creating a campaign on women and HIV/AIDS was a real challenge and I tried to understand what a woman would say to her husband in a complex situation like this.

This is the first time that a campaign encourages married couples to get involved in dialogue on gender relations and HIV/AIDS.” What Kind of Man Are You? is a 360 degree integrated communications campaign (TV, radio, print, internet, movie theatres, and transportation) which encourages dialogue on HIV/AIDS among married couples in seven languages: Bengali, Hindi, English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi.

The campaign also includes a music video to the song Maati from Breakthrough’s album Mann ke Manjeere (EMI-Virgin) sung by Shubha Mudgal, written by Prasoon Joshi and composed by Shantanu Moitra. The video features Mandira Bedi and Samir Soni and has been directed by Arjun Chandramohan Bali of Red Ice Films.

Copyright © 2005, INDIATIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JUNE 02, 2005 03:59:11 PM ]