In a groundbreaking collaboration, She Leads Impact Fund has joined hands with the “Kicking Balls” team to address the history of Child Marriages in India. To support the mission of ending child marriage and empowering affected girls, the She Leads Impact Fund is providing $25,000 in funding to bring transformative change to the lives of women married as children.
Ashvini Yardi, Guneet Monga Kapoor, and Achin Jain’s latest documentary “Kicking Balls”, Directed by Vijayeta Kumar, bring this age-old issue to the forefront. The heart-tugging film explores 3 Villages in Rajasthan where an NGO is tackling Child Marriage, through football. 200 teenage girls playing and training regularly. “Kicking Balls” amplifies the voices of these courageous girls and explores their sisterhood and journey in gaining independence and agency.
A special screening of “Kicking Balls” was recently hosted in the capital region, attracting impact investors and drawing attention to the urgent need for strengthened national and state-level policies to eliminate child marriage by 2030. This partnership between She Leads Impact Fund, Viniyard Films, and Sikhya Entertainment is dedicated to ending child marriage and supporting married girls in rural households.
Frontier Markets is leveraging its technology, ground operations, and Saheli network to facilitate screenings of the documentary in every village. The goal is to bring communities together, foster dialogue, capture data on people’s realities, and understand their access to legal rights. The initiative aims to reach 10,000 villages and engage 1 million women, helping them access platforms to voice their stories and understand their legal rights, inspired by Saheli stories to invest in their daughters.
The collaboration involves engaging with impact investors and financial institutions to unlock capital for initiatives supporting women’s empowerment and the fight against child marriage. This includes funding community programs, education, and economic opportunities for women. Moving forward, the collaboration envisions producing more impactful documentaries with Guneet Monga Kapoor to drive societal change.
Producer Guneet Monga Kapoor added, “Each year, 12 million girls are married before the age of 18. That’s 23 girls every minute. “Kicking Balls” became a project that we knew could not just be a film, it had to be a conversation. After having screened in several schools across India, I was always asked, what more I could do to help these young girls. We’re storytellers, meant to reflect what we see at the grassroots- our effort is to tell stories that ignite conversations and spark change in the policies of the country. I was extremely fortunate to meet Ajaita Shah, who exchanged her views and the magnitude of work she has done so far in fundraising to help women across the country. Together, we wish to go a step further and collaborate to engage 1 million women, in areas where child marriage and gender inequality are highly prevalent in India.”
Speaking on the announcement, Ajaita Shah, Founding Partner, She Leads Impact Fund commented, “Having spent over a decade working to uplift rural women through Frontier Markets, I have witnessed firsthand the pressing issues these women face, with child marriage being one of the most pervasive and heartbreaking. Our mission has always been to empower women by providing them with the tools, education, and opportunities they need to break free from cycles of poverty and oppression. ‘Kicking Balls’ is a powerful catalyst for this change, shining a light on the resilience and strength of young girls forced into early marriages. By partnering with visionaries like Ashvini Yardi and Guneet Monga Kapoor, we are not just telling a story—we are igniting a movement.”
