Lara Dutta to help empower women

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JAN. 20. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)'s Goodwill Ambassador, Ms. Lara Dutta, this year's Miss Universe will launch the India chapter of an international campaign for generating support - and funds - for services that empower women and girls to exercise their basic human rights.

Ms. Dutta will spend two days each in Kolkata and Mumbai interacting with children and adolescents and in the process spreading the message that these rights include access to sexual and reproductive health care, gender equality, equal education and employment opportunities and freedom from discrimination and violence.

On January 25 the visit will culminate in a ``town hall'' meeting with Mumbai youth where she will lead a group discussion on their needs, fears and desires. The meeting will be web-cast live on UNFPA website (unfpa.org) after which adolescents around the world will have the opportunity to chat live with her.

Ms. Dutta, the new millennium Miss Universe crowned in Cyprus, May, 2000, has agreed to use her star power and national affection to initiate substantial change in her home country. As a UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador and Face-to-Face Campaign spokesperson, 22-year-old Dutta will assess firsthand the needs of her country's adolescents when she visits the adolescent assistance projects in India from January 22 to 25.

Instead of a usual fact-finding mission, the new Miss Universe has designed this trip ``as a means to an urgent end''. Her research will be used in the impending establishment of innovative adolescent reproductive and sexual health programmes in several of the country's rural areas. ``By initiating public conversations about physical and emotional needs, I hope to give a greater voice to young men and women in India,'' said Ms. Dutta.

She will visit a rural West Bengal project of an NGO looking after street children, adolescent girls who have dropped out of formal education system and women in the slums of Kolkata. With adolescents she will play an innovative game on how to prevent HIV infection.

In Mumbai, Ms. Dutta will visit some of the UNFPA- supported centres under its Integrated Population and Development Project, the slums of Thane and the red-light area of Bhiwandi.

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Section  : National
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