An Internet Saathi, Anuradha Gautam from Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa has made it a mission to empower women in her village. “I could not continue my studies immediately after I was married off in the first year of my graduation,” she says, adding she had to take a gap of a year before she was able to resume her education. She realises she was the lucky one. Associated with the Internet Saathi movement that trains women in digital literacy, Anuradha is now making sure that that all women are digitally educated in her area.
An Internet Saathi, Anuradha Gautam from Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa has made it a mission to empower women in her village. “I could not continue my studies immediately after I was married off in the first year of my graduation,” she says, adding she had to take a gap of a year before she was able to resume her education. She realizes she was the fortunate one as not many women in rural backgrounds are lucky enough to get that kind of opportunity to resume their education. Associated with the Internet Saathi movement that trains women in digital literacy, Anuradha is now making sure that all women are digitally educated in her area.
An initiative of Google and Tata Trusts, implemented by DEF in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, Internet Saathi aims to train rural women in digital literacy, particularly mobile literacy, to explore the contextual relevance of the Internet for them. The purpose of Internet Saathi is to reach as many rural women as possible in select Indian states with Internet literacy.
Anuradha, after a little pause, resumed her studies and went on to accomplish degrees in Bachelors, PGDCA and MSW. This helped her develop a basic understanding of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Now she is using her skills to encourage and enable women to learn to use various digital media tools.
“I hope that I am able to bridge the gap of and educate more people,” she says, adding that Internet Saathi is providing her with a platform to use her technical skills to help women, who could not make their marks due to lack of opportunities and poor circumstances, get a second chance at learning.
In its latest phase, Internet Saathi aims at providing digitally-enabled employment opportunities to Saathis across Bihar and Madhya Pradesh by training them to carry out tablet-based surveys at the village level for third party research and organisational groups.