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New Facebook game raises awareness to women's challenges

Facebook launched a groundbreaking new game Monday that looks to raise awareness and money to empower women and girls globally.

Facebook launched a groundbreaking new game Monday that looks to raise awareness and money to empower women and girls globally.

Inspired by the best-seller "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," the new social media game aims to actually effect social change.

"We really wanted to get a broader audience," said co-author of the book Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times. "One of the problems with a book or a documentary is that by and large, those who are reading it or watching it are probably already sympathetic to the cause.”

Half the Sky Movement: The Game is the latest addition to the cross-media platform of the Half the Sky Movement.  The game introduces direct virtual-to-real-life translation, achieved by inviting players to move through a series of quests and stories related to real-world challenges that women and girls face.

Players act on behalf of an Indian woman named Radhika, who can overcome obstacles in her life with the help of virtual donations from players, the New York Times reported. Participants can then translate the virtual donations into real-world donations, the paper reported.

The launch comes just  in time for the kickoff of Women's Week—an international series of events focusing on women's rights. With approximately 300 million people playing games on Facebook across the globe, Kristof hopes to engage new supporters to the movement to advocate women's rights around the world.

"The central moral challenge for this century is empowering women around the world," said Kristof on Jansing & Co.