Digital Swaraj Fellowship: Revisiting the Journey of DEF’s Flagship Programme
Many SoochnaPreneurs across India have eventually found ways to help their communities grow in bigger ways. The training that skillfully empowers their empathising personality has pushed them to seek better means of bringing further changes on a large scale and here is a testimonial to support this.
Binita Kachhap became a SoochnaPreneur in the year 2017. She comes from a poor family where the only earning member was her father as a primary school teacher. Being a daughter of a wise teacher, she has been educated and is inspired to contribute positively to her community. This very nature of her to help the poor and needy attracted her to Digital Empowerment Foundation. She began her journey by doing the basic computer course at the Community Information Resource Centre and then started providing digital services in the village at a lesser price than that was offered at the market. Thereafter, she started taking part in the camps organised by the block coordinator to create awareness about the beneficial schemes offered by the government. As she got educated about the basic rights of the poor people, she started spreading the word in her community.
She has organised many camps on health, education, livelihood, social security and financial inclusion and has become well known in her village. The people started consulting her for issues on these services, especially the elderly and widows who started receiving their pension which had been stopped.
Outside her work, she started helping out people purely on her personal interests. Her continuous efforts ensured that the damaged hand pumps were repaired so that people could drink clean water, prior to which they were forced to drink contaminated water which transmitted diseases and small children complained of black teeth.
Eventually, people started trusting her and found her to be an honest social worker and a leader. Recognising her selfless service, people nominated her in the Panchayat elections which she won with a huge margin. Acknowledging her vision and hard work, when the block level elections were held, she was unanimously chosen as the Block Chairman of Bero in the year 2022.
During her interaction with the management team, she has confidently explained her views on the main problems faced by the people and the ways to overcome them. She accepted the importance of digitization and smart classes for youth. She was adamant to implement them on the mass scale and brought up the need for creating awareness among adolescent girls and women about menstrual hygiene for a healthy society.
Starting out as a helpful and kind person, Binita has turned into a resourceful person in her village who looks into various means to help the village grow in every sector which is reflected in the her conversations seeking support from DEF to help people have a better livelihood apart from just being farmers, daily wage farmers or micro entrepreneurs.
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