Jan Ki Baat (Voice of the People) is a bilingual (Hindi and English) digital media channel, which uses a network of citizen reporters to deliver news from across the country in the form of short video or audio file. Jan Ki Baat reporters are equipped with smartphones and are active users of social media platforms…
Malini Gupta Program Director RBS Foundation India Years ago, when micro finance witnessed a boom, I was a mere foot soldier in the larger war for equality. Our battles were many and our victories few and far between. At one frustration-fraught review meeting, one of our sagacious and pragmatic community leaders had brought us firmly…
A one-day ICT capacity building workshop was organised in Ranchi, Jharkhand, on April 9, 2017, to make local NGOs comfortable in using Google applications and other digital tools that are available for Indian non-profits to improvise their operations and management. Around 65 representatives from 52 NGOs participated in the workshop that focused on Google for…
#HumansOfSaidanpur is trying to share simple stories of everyday life from Saidanpur village in Uttar Pradesh through Baank-e-Loom’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages. The inspired hashtag is an effort to make people aware of India’s rural culture and connect people from urban spaces to rural stories. Baank-e-Loom is a project initiated by DEF in partnership…
Last month, a team from the Musiri handloom cluster in Tamil Nadu, which has been adopted by DEF and Mphasis under the former’s Digital Cluster Development Programme to digitally empower the weavers in the region, carried out a massive mobilization drive to make community members aware of the summer courses that will be offered at…
Every year, millions of people around the world transition out of poverty in a number of ways through access to better opportunities or fall back into poverty due to health, financial and other setbacks. Compounding this situation is the fact that the majority of those living in or near poverty lack even the most basic financial…
Access to information and communication was never as dynamic as it is in the age of social media. It is bringing about a monumental change in many spheres of our lives, especially governance. Bhutan is a country that is rooted in culture and tradition. But they have also come to acknowledge the importance of technology,…
DEF in partnership with the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP) conducted a seven-day training on Functional IT Skills as a part of a Certificate Course in Development Management in Netrang, Gujarat, from March 29 – April 5, 2017. The training was attended by 31 tribal youth from remote villages of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh;…
It’s incredible how social media has been able to bridge the gap between citizens and governance, society and social issues, victims and help, and service-seeker and service, among others. The power of social media is hard to dismiss today. What was once a platform to share photos with friends or follow celebrities has now also become a…
Jammu and Kashmir has seen Internet shutdowns 28 times in the last five years, but a targeted approach to curbing social media is a first