Women in Pakistan are overwhelmingly deprived of their basic right to education. The Global Gender Gap Report placed the country at 145th rank out of 156. UN Women has stated that 53.6% of women had limited access to education, training, and employment in Pakistan. There’s a widely held believe that education is useless for women. Due to social economic and cultural reasons parents keep girls out of school, preferring to have them do housework, or worse – get them married off early.

However, NGOs and companies like EMB have been working tirelessly to promote women’s education. Their efforts resulted in more girls going to school and raised the literacy rate up 4 points.

We wanted to celebrate this achievement and demonstrate how empowering girls with education can brighten their future and uplift the nation. We also hoped to inspire more parents to send their girls to school.

We turned our news into breaking news, with a special new broadcast. Two school-going girls, who could not even read three years back, took over as newscasters for the evening, reading the news to millions of people on Pakistan’s three leading news channels.

The girls, wearing their school uniforms, confidently shared their literacy journeys and how it had enabled them to read the news to millions of people in impeccable Urdu and English. They also highlighted the role of education in making them better caretakers of future generations.

This special broadcast was aired during Human Rights Month, to emphasize Pakistani girls’ right to education.

In a patriarchal society like Pakistan, boys are always seen as more deserving of education as they are most likely to have jobs and succeed. Women are restricted to traditional gender roles like looking after the house and family. We wanted to prove that girls are just as capable as boys when they have access to education.

Our strategy was to demonstrate the future possibilities that education opens for girls, by putting them on national TV, showcasing future career potential, and proving the power of education by having them read on national TV.

Television is the dominant medium in Pakistan with nearly ¾ of the country tuning in to the news every day. Everyone dreams of being on TV. Seeing the school girls broadcasters made the news of the literacy rate more impactful.

During Human Rights Month, Pakistan switched on their TV sets and tuned in to the news only to be greeted by an unusual sight – two tiny school girls, wearing their public school blue and white uniform, sitting in the broadcasters chair and announcing the news.

The news segment ran on the top three news channels, as the girls announced the rise in Pakistan’s literacy rate, then shared their literacy journeys and how it had enabled them to go from not being able to read three years ago, to reading the news to hundreds of millions of people today. The girls read the news in both English and Urdu.

This special new edition was broadcasted on various news channels in Pakistan throughout Human Rights Month- December and reached millions of viewers across the country.

The School girls newscasters is a very special news segment that was broadcasted on the top 3 news channels in Pakistan. The campaign had an impression count of more than 150 million.

EBM itself has now introduced a policy of only working with schools that have an equal representation of male and female students. Their efforts have led to numbers in 160+ schools in Pakistan that have now seen girls' enrollment lift to 57%.

The activation trended over social media, with people across the country praising the school girls and celebrating the literacy news. This was an idea that had hijacked its PR medium itself.

Seeing the girls so confidently take over the newsroom made for a powerful image that resonated with parents all over Pakistan, stirring hope from more girls like them to make their way toward a brighter future.