Digital Daan: Device for All | Education for All

The pandemic has significantly disrupted the education sector- which is a critical determinant of a country’s economic future.  In India, 320 million students have been affected by COVID-19 school closures, and though the government quickly recommended shifting to “online teaching,” this ignores India’s immense digital divide—with embedded gender and class divides.

In an effort to address the digital divide and promote inclusion, DEF started a movement to collect and encourage people to donate all kinds of old and used (but functional) Smart phones, Laptops, Tablets, Desktop/Computer (Monitors & CPU), Printers, Projectors, Camera & Camera lens through our 700 centers across 25 states and 130 districts located in rural, tribal, marginalized and unreached areas- enabling people in multiplier affect using real-life crowdsourcing.

The 2017-18 National Sample Survey reported only 23.8 percent of Indian households had internet access. In rural households (66 percent of the population), only 14.9 percent had access, and in urban households only 42 percent had access while only 12.5 percent students have access to smartphones. Therefore, the majority of counterparts in education sector have completely shut down for not having access to e-learning devices or solutions and thus creating a long term societal and economic impact on the young learners of rural households.

The Digital Daan initiative aims to tackle this issue and crowd source 10,00,000  devices from urban and metro cities and redirect them to rural communities to bridge the digital divide. It will also reach out 50,00,000 learners, primarily children, adolescents, women, underprivileged communities from digitally deprived households and work towards connecting them.

Featured across multiple news portals, the initiative has managed to garner widespread support on social media as well.

Many social workers, journalists, artists and other experts in their fields have also shown support and are now Digital Daan Ambassadors.

Dushyant Arora, Author, Journalist | Sonal Kapoor, Founder and Director, Protsahan India Foundation | Mishi Chaudhary, Legal Director, Software Freedom Law Center | Abhishank Babbar, Associate Director, Genesis BCW | Rubina Mazhar, Founder CEO, SAFA and Siddharth Kerkar, Artist, Museum of Goa.

To help reach our mission of #DigitalEmpowermentforAll, please visit digitaldaan.in and donate your old devices. You can also write to us at def.digitaldaan@gmail.com for any other queries.