March 10, 2016, marked the last day of the 100-day Jawabdehi Yatra. Thousands of people participated in the concluding march in Jaipur from the Albert Hall to the Vidhan Sabha, demanding a strong Accountability Law. DEF Founder-Director Osama Manzar, who participated in the Yatra on multiple occasions, was also in the rally. He said, “The…
On March 8, 2016, Soochna Seva commemorated ‘International Women’s Day’ at all its Soochna Seva kendras. A range of activities took place at various target locations such as aaganwadi centres, primary health centres, community health centre, government schools and gram choupal. These activities were conducted with diverse audience such as students, school principals, aaganwadi workers,…
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…
Somti Gathiya, a resident of Raipur village in Betul district of Madhya Pradesh, was a facilitator of a SHG supported by a local NGO called Pradan. She was extremely fond of the NGO’s wors and dreamt of handling bigger responsibilities. However, a middle school dropout, Somti deemed herself under-qualified to ever pursue her dream. A…
Fareeda Isaac (47) is a social entrepreneur from Puducherry. As a dynamic social worker, Fareeda began her journey in 2005 when she created a women’s only self-help group (SHG) in Orleanpet region of Puducherry. Soon, she had formed two more SHGs. Once every month, she would organise a meeting with each SHG at her house…
Kiran Kumari lives in Mansoorpur town of Bihar. She is the trainer and coordinator at CIRC Mansoorpur. Kiran (28) and her husband Raghav have been consistently working towards the upliftment of her community. A runaway couple spent their initial years after marriage at the Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan. There, Raghav used his experience of…
mBillionth Awards has launched its 7th edition to explore, recognise and honour excellence in the field of mobile innovations, applications and content services for development and empowerment across South Asia. We are now accepting nominations for mBillionth Awards 2016. If you are the brain behind an innovative mobile app or technology that is empowering the…
In the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, mirrors are one way to reach out to each other
This article was first published in the Mint newspaper on March 2, 2016. This is a story of communities whose world of knowledge, skills and wisdom lies in oral and audio visual communication. Despite being functional illiterates, their current generation is fast adopting digital tools and media to leverage their traditional skills, like folk music—not just…
Trai has rebuked telcos and the likes of Facebook which had introduced Free Basics as a content service in the name of providing free access to the Internet
