Bengaluru: When he skates 6,000 km, 25,000 girl children can go to school

Bengaluru: Have skates. Will travel. Or in the case of international skater Rana Uppalapati, will skate for 6,000 km over the next 90 days, passing through the Golden Quadrilateral, touching Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai. All, to spread the message of educating the underprivileged girl child.

Uppalapati's expedition, flagged off from the city on Wednesday, will raise funds to educate 25,000 female children, with the funds raised from the campaign routed to Titan Kanya - a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative which educates the underprivileged girl child across the country.

“The expedition will also oversee 6,000 awareness sessions organised at different points, reaching out to 6 lakh children and other stakeholders. The campaign will also teach students about 'good touch and bad touch' to protect them from predators,” said Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director of Titan.

The expedition, titled 'Educate to Carry Her Onwards (ECHO)', which began from Hosur, will return to the city on December 4. The decision to choose the Golden Quadrilateral, which connects Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai, for the campaign was deliberate, as a large number of untoward incidents have occurred in areas along these routes.

Uppalapati has done this before. In 2016, he completed a 242-km expedition from Odisha to Visakhapatnam to create awareness on breast cancer. Last year, his campaign motivated college students and others to register as stem cell donors.