Bringing technology in mainstream education
The once underserved village of Chandauli can now boast of 2,890 digitally literate persons, courtesy DEF’s implementation of the Minority Cyber Gram Yojana (MCGY). In late 2013, the Ministry of Minority Affairs of the government of India decided to launch MCGY. The objective was to provide basic digital infrastructure, Internet access, digital literacy and information services related to citizen entitlements in minority concentrated areas, beginning with Chandauli village in Alwar district of Rajasthan. The ultimate aim was to mainstream such minority groups and communities towards digital and development inclusion along with rest of the country.
The ministry called for proposals to implement the first pilot project and selected DEF to implement the pilot project and set up the first Minority Cyber Gram at Chandauli — with 1,300 household — to demonstrate the positive impact of development through digital intervention, Internet, information access and digital literacy. Under the project, DEF delivered more than what was expected of it. By the end of 2015, a total of 2,890 persons had been made digitally literate (as against the government specified project target of 2,600 individual beneficiaries at the rate of two per household, and 325 had accessed MCGY centre to access public schemes and entitlements.
The feat was recently covered in Rajasthan Patrika. To view the coverage in the newspaper, visit here.
Chandauli is the same village that Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had visited along with DEF Founder-Director Osama Manzar in 2014 to see the CIRC.
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