Bollywood actors have always been perceived as glamorous and above the ordinary man, far from reach and shrouded in mystery. However, that is not the case. For years, actors have used their platform and their reach to make a difference,and their voices to draw attention towards change and raise awareness. These 5 actors have made a world of difference, take a look at their impact.

1. Tinsel town seems a very appropriate name for the glittery and glamorous
Bollywood. Bollywood celebrities have often been made out to be larger than life
success stories in which the grit and the grime of their back breaking work is
reduced to no more than a montage, much like a coming-of-age Bollywood movie.
In this process, we feel disconnected from the glamorous lives of these enigmatic
individuals. That said, however, human beings do have one attribute in common,
humanity. We all have those moments, where we’ve helped someone with heavy
books up the stairs or fed hungry street dogs or even stopped a stranger on the
road to offer a smile and a compliment. And while the world is dangerously at the
brink of collapse, it is the tremendous selfless acts, of extending a hand to cling
onto, or even a spine, to stand tall, that delicately holds the crumbling world
together.

2. I could break humanity down to its Cambridge or even Oxford dictionary
meaning, but since actions have always spoke louder than words, listed below are
simple examples of extraordinary humanity at work:
MARD- “Mard ko dard nahi hota”, “mard rote nahi hai”, “Tu kaisa mard hai”, We’ve all
heard it, some of us have brushed it off with a laugh or a cheeky smile and some of us have
even said it. Some for the sake of it, some conscious of the effect it has, encouraging men to
suppress their emotions, to bottle their feelings to look tough and strong at all times. Trust

3. Farhan Akhtar to take a word that embodies negative male gender stereotype and put a
positive spin on it. In March, 2013, Akhtar launched a social campaign, MARD- Men against
Rape and Discrimination, origin story of which is the gruesome murder of Pallavi
Purkayastha, a Mumbai lawyer. She was murdered by her watchman for trying to defend
herself when he tried to sexually assault her.
MARD spreads awareness about rape and discrimination of women through music. It
caused quite a stir on social media at its inception, garnering support and accolades for

4. what it stood for. In a an interview, Akhtar, while speaking about his brainchild said of it
that he wanted to bring MARD to the campuses of educational institutions, “to drive home
the message that women need to be respected”. Apart from that, the official website,
http://www.therealmard.org/ offers newcomers the chance to take a pledge against sexual
harassment, assault and discrimination against women and to spread awareness and
educate everyone around them about it. Farhan was the first catalyst of the change that he
wanted to bring about and now, 6,12,366 Indians have taken a pledge to stand against rape
and discrimination against women with the number rising every day.
DIA MIRZA- Dia Mirza has always been actively involved with social work and
community service. She, along with Amir Khan, publicly expressed solidarity for Narmada
Bachao Aandolan, a group protesting the building of dams over the river. She also endorsed

5. Body Shop in their stand against animal testing and their propagation of recycled
packaging and natural products.
Besides that, she has been involved with Cancer Patients Aids Association and Spastics
Society of India and has worked extensively with the government of Andhra Pradesh to
spread HIV awareness, prevention of female foeticide, PETA, CRY and most recently the
NDTV Greenathon – an effort to find tangible solutions against pollution. She has also been
actively involved with the book, "Deke Dheko" by Radio Mirchi (a campaign initiated to
collect books for underprivileged children). She is on the board of the Coca-Cola foundation
that works towards development in rural India. She is associated with campaigns such as
Sanctuary Asia's Leave Me Alone and Female Foeticide.
https://spark.live/
https://spark.live/kannada/
https://spark.live/read/category/fashion-1/
She is the Eco-Ambassador for Panasonic and has been named the ambassador for the
Swachh Bharat Mission's youth-based 'Swachh Saathi' programme. As an ambassador, the

6. actress would interact with school and college students from across the country through
awareness sessions, community cleaning activities and motivational videos.
She joined Save the Children India as their first ever artist ambassador.
On World Environment Day 2017, she was appointed brand ambassador for the Wildlife
Trust of India. In 2010, she visited The Price of Wales Zoological Park in Lucknow, where she
adopted two cheetah cubs. She has lent her support to WTI's wildlife conservation
endeavours for several years and is a founder-member of the organization's Club Nature
initiative, also supporting a campaign to raise awareness about the shrinking space for wild
elephants in the country.
She was also appointed as the UN Environment's Goodwill Ambassador for India. Dia Mirza
has actively been involved and interacted with her community, guiding those around her,
providing support and a helping hand and working, always striving for a future that she
wants to see.

7. NAAM FOUNDATION- Legally registered in, September 2015 by its founders,
Nana Patekar and Makarand Anaspure, the Naam Foundation had already begun work in
early months of 2015. Patekar along with actor Makarand took it upon themselves to
distribute 15000 rupees and a care packet consisting of blankets, clothes and medical kits to
each of the families of the farmers who had committed suicide in the year 2015. Initially, they
helped 230 families from the villages in the districts of Nanded, Parbhani, Hingoli. This
initial help however was at a personal level. However, instead of helping a select few families
and to extend their reach, they officially registered the organisation and set up a bank
account in the State Bank of India where people or organisations make their donations and
contributions to the organisation. According to its official website, http://naammh.org/,
NAAM is a manifestation of human spirit in response to the outbreak due to lamented
turmoil happening around. NAAM is a movement with honest intentions to facilitate

8. development of disadvantaged villages and lives of people which has now turned into a
giant leap. Hope this movement will keep colouring the lives of people in a massive way.
Mission of NAAM foundation is to build sustainable & progressive society by facilitating
development in rural areas by working on different issues like infrastructure, education,
employment, food & so on.
Aside from helping the families of the farmers who committed suicide, Naam foundation
has used its funds to build, ponds, rivers and small canals in drought affected areas, all part
of its water rejuvenation scheme, helped build houses, provide proper education and
disaster relief and assisted in farming. The Naam Foundation is Nana Patekar’s “Will to live
till my last breath”.

9. SO POSITIVE DSR - Ananya Pandey has always been mercilessly trolled, whether
it is for her acting or for her comments. Having been face to face with trolls and negative,
insulting comments on social media, Pandey decided to take a stand against Cyber bullying,
which she termed as a Digital Social Responsibility. Her campaign, “SO POSITIVE” is backed
with substantial, data, research and behavioural statistics. According to the official site of
the campaign (https://sopositivedsr.com/#), “the initiative’s prime focus is to make people
aware of the fact that this issue exists and stays very prevalent in society. Also, the steps that
can be taken by the recipients of this destructive criticism in order to deal with this.”

10. Pandey, through, So Positive, aims to build a community that takes a strong stand against
cyber bullying, a community that she has with her, informed move, already started leading
towards positive change.
PINKATHON: Milind Soman has been running marathons for over the last 15 years. In
this time, running marathons as a sport or fitness initiative had garnered a lot of attention,
however, he noticed a dearth in the number of women participants that made him enquire
what held them back from participation and how he could make a change that would
inspire and encourage more women to run marathons.

11. That change came around in the form of Pinkathon, launched in 2012, along with Reema
Sanghavi. It was created with the specific purpose of creating awareness about women’s
health issues, and breast cancer in particular. It is now India’s biggest women’s run, which
sees participation from women from all walks of life. Married women, baby weaning
mothers, cancer survivors, women with physical disabilities, married women, mothers,
working women.
The concept of Pinkathon was created on the premise that healthy women are a key to a
healthier society. According to its official website, http://www.pinkathon.in/#1 , “It is an
unique initiative which works with one simple underlying theme- empowered women will,
by example, empower and inspire other women.”