While rural India is still gripped with the struggle to achieve cent percent literacy rate as the public schools deliver archaic content without much changes in the basic infrastructure, the students emerging from such an education background often find it hard to find parity in coping with the digital world. Currently, the norm followed by the fortunate few is to achieve digital literacy that goes hand in hand with functional literacy in order to even enter the growing world of opportunities. This presents all the more reason to consider digital literacy and education as one of the foundation pillars that supports the drive to end information poverty and, thereby, economic poverty.
Digital Empowerment Foundation has ideated multiple projects that dwell in ensuring empowerment through digital literacy and education. From mentorship programmes like GOAL (Going Online As Leaders), STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) program introduced in the schools to frequent workshops and trainings conducted at the centres equipped with digital tools to impart digital literacy to young students and women, all these projects are aligned to the national and global mandate of creating a digitally literate and information-rich knowledge society. This edition of the newsletter brings the stories around the impact of such projects, journeys of new learnings during the implementation and updates on ongoing projects.