Only 26 percent of women in Pakistan are literate. Many families do not educate their daughters because of societal and religious pressures and in the last 6 years Islamic militants have blown up more than 600 schools across the country, forcing thousands of women to stay at home.

"Humaira: The Dream Catcher", second provocation film of Chime for Change campaign for women’s and girl’s empowerment, chronicles the life of a young woman who is fighting to educate girls in her community. Through sheer determination, she has set up a school that now educates over 1200 children for one cent a day.

Today, Salma Hayek Pinault co-hosted a press conference with Mariane Pearl, John Legend and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy to announce THE SOUND OF CHANGE LIVE, a global concert event taking place on Saturday 1 June at London’s Twickenham Stadium and broadcast around the world. Headlined by Beyoncé, the concert event will be presented by CHIME FOR CHANGE, the recently launched global campaign founded by Gucci, which serves to raise funds and awareness for girls’ and women’s empowerment.

Tickets for the concert will be available on the campaign website, and distributed through Ticketmaster, beginning at 9am GMT on Wednesday 27 March. Each ticket purchase will result in a donation to one of the campaign’s three pillars – Education, Health, and Justice – through CHIME FOR CHANGE partner Catapult, the first crowd-funding platform dedicated to the advancement of girls and women.

Catapult, the first crowd-funding platform dedicated to advancing the lives of girls and women is, alongside the Kering Foundation, a strategic partner of Chime for Change - the global campaign founded by Gucci for girls’ and women’s empowerment.

The aim? Internet users make a donation according to their means toward the ONG project to the benefice of women they want to contribute to. Le project is financed and can be launched as soon as the necessary budget is reached. Then, donators get reports from beneficiaries and are updated with the project progress (90 days minimum after the donation and one year after the whole amount has been reached).

Support NGOs projects the Kering Foundation is partnering with and raise funds on the crowdfunding platform:

• AFESIP, fighting against trafficking and sexual exploitation in Cambodia
• Equilibres & Populations, encouraging the abandon of Female Genital Mutilation
• Doctors of the World, helping women in Southern Laos, Syrian women refugees and mothers of Nepal access to better health services
• Pesinet, Mali & Burkina Faso, fighting against infant and maternal mortality
• Planète Enfants, contributing to the social reintegration of women victims of prostitution via shelters and revenue-generating activities.
• Samu Social International, fighting domestic violence in the Huaycan shantytown - Peru

Eve Ensler shares with us the reasons of her involvement and her point of view on the main ways of action to be developed to end violence against women. With V-Day and the One Billion Rising campaign, she has convinced one billion people to rise up and dance last February 14. 

Read the interview.

"I think the hardest thing we have to confront is patriarchy, the mind-set of patriarchy which has been drilled for thousands of years into our body and cells and thinking. We have to go at the problem of violence against women from many angles. We must create laws and then fight to make sure they are applied. (…) We must make this issue the major issue of our time".

On the occasion of Chime for Change’s launching, the new global campaign to raise funds and awareness for girls’ and women’s empowerment, Salma Hayek Pinault presented the first provocation film of Chime for Change: The Supreme Price, produced and directed by Joanna Lipper.

The Supreme Price tells the story of Hafsat Abiola. Following the annulment of her father's victory in Nigeria's Presidential Election and her mother's assassination by agents of the military dictatorship, Hafsat faces the challenge of transforming a corrupt culture of governance into a democracy capable of serving Nigeria's most marginalized population: women.

In 2011, Joanna Lipper received a « Spotlighting Women Documentary Award », given each year by the Kering Foundation in partnership with Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund to film projects that illuminate the courage, extraordinary strength of character of women from around the world.

Credits: Joanna Lipper

Watch extended Trailer for The Supreme Price, produced and directed by Joanna Lipper: