Animal Angels on Mission Ustaad

Minal Kavishwar and  Kutty, the therapy dog at Anand Dighe Jidd School, Thane were featured on a special TV show called Mission Ustaad (Ustaad means Maestro). It is a musical program created by United Nations and Endemol Productions for the awareness of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in India. Top Bollywood singer sing on themes of the MDG and spread the message through their self composed songs.

In an attempt to create awareness about the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 9X channel hosted Mission Ustaad , a music and entertainment-filled show. Besides entertaining millions of viewers on 9X, the aim of Mission Ustaad was to communicate the essence of the Millennium Development Goals across the length and breadth of the country. The show featured three eminent judges and eight top-notch singers. The three judges of the show are musician A R Rahman, writer and poet Javed Akhtar and Ex- Miss Universe and Bollywood star, UN representative Lara Dutta. The competing Bollywood  singers were likes of Mahalakshmi Iyer,Kailash Kher, Naresh Iyer, Roopkumar Rathod, Sonali Rathod, Vasundhara Das, Mohit Chauhan and Shweta Pandit. Evey week these singers perform on a theme from the MDG, like women empowerment, education etc. And every week a special guest is called on the show to represent the theme.

Minal and Kutty were called as special guests for their last theme "LOVE" where Kutty represented unconditional love. The rationale behind proposing this new goal (besides the 8 goals decided by India) was, "If you do not have love for your fellow human being, you will not be able to achieve the other 8 goals like eradicating poverty, empowering women, education for all etc. If Kutty, a dog can give self less love to the mentally challenged children and accept them for who they are, then we humans have a lot to learn from this award winning therapy dog."
 

The United Nations Millennium Campaign:

At the United Nations Millennium Summit in 2000, 189 world leaders signed the Millennium Declaration and made the historic promise of ending world’s poverty by the year 2015. They agreed  to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)- the eight-point road map with measurable targets and clear deadlines for improving the lives of the world’s poorest people. The goals have to be achieved by 2015. While the poor countries pledged to improve policies and governance, the richer countries pledged to provide the resources. Today, over 1.2 billion people in the world live on less than 1$ a day.

9X entertainment Channel Mission Ustaad website

Mission Ustaad - Photo Gallery (check for episode 20-21)