Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], August 2 (ANI/PNN): BookASmile, the charity initiative of India's leading entertainment destination, BookMyShow, and Centre For Transforming India (CFTI) are continuing their joint mission to aid underprivileged communities in rural areas by providing access to sports facilities that empower and uplift them, creating a platform of equal opportunity for playing a sport.

Together, BookASmile and CFTI have built a compelling and large basketball court in the small village of Veshvi, Alibag in Maharashtra, for young beneficiaries that hail from families of farmers and fishermen.

With this space that will allow these young villagers to play the sport of basketball in Veshvi, BookASmile and CFTI aim to promote a new sport and get the youth in the village and neighbouring areas invested in training for it over the long term. The court has been made on the campus of Prabhakar Patil Education Society.

Over 6000 students on the campus and more than 300 children from nearby villages can use the court and learn the nuances of basketball. Along with getting access to the new court, they can also train with professional coaches from the Hi5 Basketball Academy, completely free of cost. The children, who are already familiar with traditional games like Kho Kho, Kabaddi and Cricket, now have the opportunity to explore the world of a new global sport and take a step toward a potential career in it.

It is the latest in a slew of initiatives that BookASmile and CFTI have worked together for, towards the upliftment of underprivileged communities in the state. In the past, BookASmile and CFTI have carried out a bicycle donation drive to help young female students in villages, established dedicated emergency Covid-19 hospitals and distributed grocery kits during the disastrous Konkan floods.

This latest initiative of building a functional and effective basketball court for youngsters from the village is an extension of BookASmile's core belief in fostering overall personality development that goes beyond textbook and classroom education by taking entertainment experiences across sports, cinema, and theatre, music and art to less fortunate communities.

Speaking about the initiative, Farzana Cama Balpande, Head - BookASmile, said, "At BookASmile, we aim to enable access to entertainment-led-experiences to beneficiaries from underprivileged communities to positively influence their overall personality development through art and learning. Our journey with CFTI has been an enriching one, and we hope to continue making an impact across communities in the state and beyond, through our work, including the creation of sports-driven experiences and facilities, empowering the youth and fostering the peripheral learnings that one is exposed to, through any sport. We are deeply grateful to be able to bring such experiences for the young beneficiaries and look forward to undertaking more initiatives across these fields going forward."

Sharing her thoughts on the latest collaborative effort, Chitralekha Patil, Mentor - Trustee, CFTI Trust, said, "This was important to us because we want to make sure no one is deprived of the pleasure of experiencing things that would normally be inaccessible/non-existent in small villages. Thanks to the generosity of BookASmile and their continued support, we have been able to launch another successful campaign. Without their contribution, none of this would have been possible. The desire to carry on our mission to empower and uplift the underprivileged has never been stronger, and this is just the beginning."

India's leading entertainment destination BookMyShow launched its charity initiative BookASmile in 2014 with a vision to support special causes and enrich the lives of the less fortunate across India through entertainment-led experiences.

BookASmile invests a lot of energy to create an inviting community to ensure that they can be privy to opportunities by incorporating into their lives, activities and experiences from across genres like Cinema, Sport, Theatre, Music & Arts.

The BookASmile initiative has been operational since 2014 and has been integrated into the BookMyShow App and website. With BookMyShow's vast customer base, the initiative has been raising funds for special causes whereby every consumer can choose to contribute from Re.1/- per ticket. For more information, please visit www.bookmyshow.com/donation/

Centre For Transformation India (CFTI) is a grassroots-level non-governmental organization founded in 2009 that works towards bringing growth opportunities to rural India through education, healthcare, poverty alleviation, women empowerment, and other sustainable development goals.

With a strong network of 700+ grassroots level volunteers connected to the soil working towards transforming rural India by building opportunities and sources for the villagers to lead a better life, CTFI has undertaken numerous initiatives for the upliftment of villages in Maharashtra.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/cfti-India/

Launched in 2007, BookMyShow, owned and operated by Big Tree Entertainment Pvt Ltd (founded in 1999), is India's leading entertainment destination with global operations and the one-stop shop for every entertainment need. The firm is present in over 650 towns and cities in India and works with partners across the industry to provide unmatched entertainment experiences to millions of customers.

Over the years, the company has evolved from a purely online ticketing platform for movies across 6,000 plus screens to end-to-end management of live entertainment events, including music concerts, live performances, theatricals, sports and more, all accomplished at par with global standards. Some of the key properties that BookMyShow has brought to its markets over the past few years include U2's The Joshua Tree Tour, NBA's debut games in India, Disney's Aladdin, Cirque du Soleil BAZZAR as also international artists such as Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber to name a few.

BookMyShow is invested in providing the best user experience, whether on-ground or online and to that effect, it has developed the first-of-its-kind video streaming platform solely for live entertainment in India - 'BookMyShow Online', marking its entry into the streaming business. Complementing its cinemas business, the firm also launched 'BookMyShow Stream', India's largest home-grown transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) platform hosting award-winning and critically acclaimed content from around the world.

BookMyShow also houses India's most extensive organic reviews and rating engine for movies and has driven technology innovations, such as the m-ticket and Movie Mode, impacting tens of millions of users and the industry at large.

With continued support from marquee investors like TPG Growth, Stripes Group, Elevation Capital (formerly SAIF Partners), Accel and Network18, BookMyShow has constantly demonstrated category leadership, growing beyond India with operations in UAE, Singapore, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, amongst others.

The Mumbai-headquartered company counts Ticket Green, Eventifier, Masti Tickets and Townscript amongst its key investments in the sector. BookMyShow is also committed to society at large by way of its charity initiative BookASmile, which supports special causes to enrich the lives of the less fortunate across India through entertainment-led experiences.

For further details, please contact:

BookMyShow: media@bookmyshow.com

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