Lenovo’s New Realities project showcases women empowering their communities through technology

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Growing up in a rural village in India,

was expected to follow the example of the women before her: stay close, get married and have children. She defied her community’s expectations to forge her own path. She learned how to use a mobile phone and access online maps, which made her confident when traveling by herself. And she quickly picked up on how search engines could help her find other answers. “I no longer feel any fear with so much direct access to knowledge,” she says. Now she works full-time educating teachers – more than 300 so far – using technology to help them be more effective in class. [caption id=attachment_175446" align="aligncenter" width="1024]https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/05-New-Realities_India_Ashwini-Doddalingappanavar-Basavaraj-Hoogar_resize-1024x680.jpg Ashwini Doddalingappanavar with women in her village (Photo by Basavaraj Hoogar)[/caption]

“I got a lot of pressure to marry and settle down because of my culture and family values, but I wanted more,” Doddalingappanavar says. “I felt like I had to come out of my comfort zone and needed to break the box that I was in. The feeling to do and be more was so strong that it gave me the courage to go for training. I decided to speak up and tell my family that I wanted to become independent. It was hard to convince my parents. That was the first time I left my village, and that was the first time I was away from my family. It was a big fear. But, leaving and being on my own was a huge breakthrough in my life.”

 

The 24-year-old got a job with Meghshala, helping to train teachers in Bangalore. She’s also pursuing an MBA.

 

Doddalingappanavar is one of 10 women featured in New Realities, a Lenovo-backed project that debuted in October and showcases each woman through an immersive 360-degree virtual reality (VR) film series. With the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8, Lenovo turns the spotlight back on the women and how they’ve continued their journeys. It all began with a report last year. https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/All-New-Realities-posters-1.jpg Lenovo’s 2020 Empathy and Technology Report revealed that 78% of those surveyed believe an “empathy gap” prevents them and others from seeing the world from perspectives other than their own. But the company also glimpsed a ray of hope in another observation: 51% of Gen Z (18- to 24-year-olds) surveyed acknowledged that technology makes them more empathetic, because it helps them experience life through other people’s eyes. “As a result of these findings, we challenged ourselves to create a unique, technology-driven project to amplify the voices of young women who are part of Gen Z, hoping that if the world heard their stories of hope and change, the combination of their passion, creativity and use of technology could begin to narrow the gap and bring us all closer together – particularly in the time of societal unrest, COVID-19 and social distancing,” says Dilip Bhatia, Lenovo Chief Customer Experience Officer. “Told in the first person, they invite us to see the world through their eyes. Together, the 10 stories build into a picture of an entire generation, transcending borders and actively working for a better world.”These are stories and voices we don’t normally hear – young women from diverse racial, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.Each of the women featured in the New Realities films received Windows 10 Lenovo devices specifically to support their mission, such as the enterprise-grade ThinkPad X1 Yoga laptop for coding, or the Yoga C940 for music. “I am learning Python with the help of this system – and I am enjoying learning,” says Doddalingappanavar, referring to her Lenovo IdeaPad D330 laptop. “It makes expanding my knowledge much easier. It makes presenting to my peers, teachers and students much easier. It is very user-friendly. Personally, I love it.” Lenovo partnered with Girl Up (the gender equality initiative of the United Nation Foundation), award-winning American filmmaker and activist Ava DuVernay, One Young World and other nonprofit organizations to develop the stories and then to reach a wider global audience. Lenovo has also committed $100,000 in grant money and scholarships to help these young women pursue fields of study that align with their goals, and create opportunities for the next generation of budding “changemakers.” [caption id=attachment_175449" align="aligncenter" width="1024]https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/06-New-Realities_USA_Kemi-Dauda_Credit-Sylvia-Jarrus_resize-1024x682.jpg Kemi Dauda (Photo by Sylvia Jarrus)[/caption] One of the women profiled in New Realities,

, leads a team of nine high school and college-age women in the nonprofit she founded as a college freshman in 2017, Bringing Hope Back Home (BHBH). Majoring in psychology and minoring in Afro American & African studies at the University of Michigan, she will be graduating this spring. BHBH provides Detroit high school students with college prep resources. It initially began as summer workshops at Dauda’s high school, covering topics such as financial aid, SAT prep and essay writing. The group transitioned from in-person programming to virtual webinars and 1:1 video calls and started helping students outside of Detroit, hoping to be more helpful. [caption id=attachment_175448" align="alignright" width="683]https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/2/2021/03/08-New-Realities_India_Ashwini-Doddalingappanavar-Basavaraj-Hoogar-1024x682.jpg Ashwini Doddalingappanavar filming her video for New Realities (Photo by Basavaraj Hoogar)[/caption] In one case, the team decided it would be too risky to send a crew to film, so they delivered equipment to the woman and then trained her – remotely – to shoot her own film. “By overcoming this obstacle, a shining creative moment emerged,” Bhatia says. “Ashwini, who lives in rural India and had no real experience with technology, was able to bring viewers into her world, on her own terms, resulting in an amazing, heartfelt film that gives viewers a chance to experience the world as she sees and lives it.” “While the pandemic had us reconsider and adapt nearly every single part of our original project, New Realities’ mission of showing how smart technology can help to increase understanding and deepen our empathy became even more critical,” says Bhatia. Check out all their other stories at the New Realities site. Lead photo: Ashwini Doddalingappanavar working on content for her New Realities video. (Photo by Ramesh Hulageri)

 

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