How was India in 2002? Internet was just about seven years old in the country. Mobile was still struggling to achieve a big penetration; there were just 13 million mobile subscriptions in India. Service providers were facing the challenges of trying to minimise the cost of per call rate to geometrically increase the volume of customers. None of the major Acts like the Right to Information (2005), the Right to Education (2009), the National Food Security Act (2013) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005) were in place yet. There were also just 82,409 fixed broadband subscriptions in India. Access to digital tools was limited and access to the Internet and the information it held was even low in the one billion-plus country. It was with this understanding and realisation that Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) was registered as a not-for-profit organisation under the Indian Societies Registration Act, 1860, to carry out this mission of empowering people digitally. 

Digital Empowerment Foundation is an integral digital action organisation. DEF constantly acts into creation of information empowerment, equitable communities by providing digital access to information, knowledge and contextual capacity. The organisation’s main focus is on to make technology easily accessible to the masses, to empower women, youth, differently abled and elderly through functional digital literacy, media literacy, and digital up-skilling across agriculture, micro and nano-business, health, education, livelihood, and entrepreneurship. 

DEF believes, in the digital era access to information and digital knowhow is a necessity and should not lead to exclusion. Therefore, DEF constantly works in contextualising and economising and ensuring access to digital tools its first priority. 

Over the last 23 years, the Organisation is actively engaged in digitally empowering local communities through its 2000 Community Information Resource Centres and wide spread of 10,000 digital foot soldiers located across 25 states and 250+ districts in rural, tribal, marginalised, and unreached areas. 

DEF has directly impacted more than 35 million people including people from below poverty line, women, artisans, youth, persons with disabilities, and elderly.  

For more information, please email us at info@defindia.org