By Ancy Reuben | Resource Mobilization Manager
Dear Donors,
Grretings from IDEA Foundation!
As you know, one of the most important projects we have taken up in the recent past was starting our NDLM(National Digital Literacy Mission) centres in Pune, for underprivileged youth and women.
NDLM is an effort to complement government’s vision to transform one from each household as digitally literate.
We have started our NDLM centres to complement government of India’s plan to make one person in the house digitally literate by 2020 , so that each household is ready to interact with the digital World through skills which are necessary to meet it’s ever increasing demands.
We have been successful in teaching thousands of beneficiaries skills required to manage online bank transactions, ticket booking and filling up college applications. But we never knew we will be completely dependent on these skills so fast. We are thankful to each one of you for supporting this project and trusting our ability to run these programs efficiently in marginalised communities. Today we are able to run our programs remotely because we have already laid a foundation and we could make many of them confident to use technology with ease.
Even our beneficiaries from other skilling programs were also encouraged to complete the NDLM program as an added skill and now they are making use of this knowledge. We could easily switch to online coaching as soon as the lockdown was imposed. Now we have made it compulsory for all skill development course to have computer training as a part of the curriculum.
Our Home chef students are getting orders online, they are reaching out to COVID patients in quarantine through online orders and door step deliveries ,our arts and craft students are selling their products through social media and even a lady is running a YouTube to teach cooking online.
One of our beneficiary from Arts and Crafts course Ms. Sheela says “ I am so fortunate to get computer training as a part of our art and craft course. Now I am confident to use my smart phone for selling my products without going out of my house during lock down. I am able to do all money transactions without fear. I am also able to use Youtube to learn new designs for jewelleries . I pay my children’s school fees online, I can send emails and use social media to market my products. I am thankful to IDEA foundation for their timely action and helping us to make use of the skills we have learned. My children are attending online classes and I am able to support them.”
Our NDLM centres are in city, but now we need to run massive training programs to make even our rural communities digitally literate as these people cannot be left out when everything is getting completely dependent on technology. When educational institutes switched to online platforms our underprivileged communities are once again challenged with no access to education. Most of them can’t even afford a smart phone for the family. To empower these communities we need to provide them smart phones before starting the training sessions. New challenges are many for us as an NGO working in marginalised communities with uneducated population, but with the support of generous people like you we will be able to overcome most of it.
Thank you so much for your support so far , please continue to support us and enable us to expand our reach to many more communities.
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