Empowering Women through Technology : By - Dr. Akhtar Badshah Senior Director & Worldwide Head, Community Affairs, Microsoft Corporation

It was a dream come true for Kayanat. Coming out of wilderness characterized by poverty and squalor, she never thought that at the age of 20 she would be extending a helping hand to ameliorate the financial condition of her family.

Same is also true of Saba Fayaz. Hailing from a non-descript area near Kanpur where poverty, scarcity and unemployment rule the roost, Fayaz, also of the same age as Kayanat, does not look to others for her expenses. On the other hand, she contributes to her family income, making her parents proud.

Manju Singh, a resident of Tigri in Delhi, is earning much to afford education of her three kids in a public school. Having lost her husband who used to indulge in overdrinking, Manju was at her wits’ end to shape the future of her children. With no one to support the family, it was an arduous job for her to extricate herself from this agonising situation. But all this began to change the moment Udayan Care, a Delhi-based NGO, came to her rescue.

One thing is common to all the above-mentioned three women. All of them exude confidence. They were able to take themselves out of their distressing situation, thanks to the efforts of NGOs that get grants from Microsoft under its worldwide Unlimited Potential Programme (Project Jyoti in India) at regular intervals.

In Uttar Pradesh – one of the least-developed states in India – low literacy and poverty among women have resulted in a wide gender divide in the workforce. However, a technology training programme launched by Datamation is working to bridge the divide, thus aiming to eliminate computer illiteracy among women by providing them basic computer skills.

Vikas Goswami, Lead – Corporate Social Responsibility, Legal & Corporate Affairs, Microsoft India, said, “The programme targets women unable to join private institutes to learn computer skills. Funded by Microsoft, the Unlimited Potential Programme offers women opportunities to receive free computer courses.”

To help bring the women into the IT field and the general economic mainstream, Datamation, a non-profit organization supported by Microsoft Corporation, launched its pilot” “ICT for Development” programme amongst poor and semi-literate women in the Kanpur–Lucknow corridor in Uttar Pradesh.

Virendra Tripathy, District Coordinator, Datamation, believes that the programme fills a critical void by giving marginalized women access to the kind of technology training inaccessible to the poor locally.

“We are particularly addressing women’s education and empowerment in central UP and helping them to enter the workforce,” says Ramesh Chandra.

Datamation has set up community learning centres in the districts of central UP. Funding for “ICT for Development” was provided by Microsoft under its Unlimited Potential Programme.

Microsoft recently announced an additional funding of Rs.6 crore to four of its partner NGOs. The grant, awarded during a ceremony in New Delhi, will be used to provide computers and computer software in the underserved areas.

By combining Datamation’s model for community technology education and Microsoft’s Project Jyoti, we are confident we can make technology accessible, useful and meaningful,” said Chetan Sharma, Founder, Datamation Research Services.

The Unlimited Potential Programme, launched in India in 2004, is aimed at enabling IT access to underserved communities in the rural and semi-urban India. The grant beneficiaries include Aga Khan Foundation, Datamation Foundation Charitable Trust, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation and Udayan Care. With this announcement, the total grants given by Microsoft under the project Jyoti in India stand at Rs.35 crore, training over 220,000 individuals by 2010 across 17 states and Union Territories in India.

Project Jyoti involves a joint commitment by Microsoft and its NGO partners to deliver effective interventions for taking IT to women and undeserved communities in the rural and semi-urban India. The pivot of the programme is a networked Community Technology Learning Centre (CTLC), a free or low cost, where people of all ages and abilities can come to learn about computers, use the Internet, explore new careers, further their education, participate in community activities or develop technology skills.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Akhtar Badshah, Senior Director & Worldwide Head, Community Affairs, Microsoft Corporation, said, “Information technology is a great enabler of individuals to explore new opportunities and improve their lives. This is particularly true for marginalized communities, which risk being left behind in the development process. Microsoft’s ‘Unlimited Potential Programme’ seeks to help these communities bridge the divide. Since its launch, the programme has invested in close-to 100 countries across the globe. We are very excited about the impact of our programme in India and committed to its long-term benefit in the country.”

The resolve to bridge the digital divide in India got a boost when Microsoft announced a fresh grant of Rs.6 crore to four of its partner NGOs under the unlimited Potential Programme.

With the Microsoft money, Datamation will increase the number of CTLCs in Uttar Pradesh to a total of 30 and continue the focus on providing IT skills to underserved women by training 21,000 of them and indirectly benefiting 84,000 people from the larger underserved community through information access and IT-enabled vocational training over a period of three years.

The programme is one of Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates’ many philanthropic efforts. It strives to provide a billion dollars in grants over the next three years to promote computer literacy and address the digital divide.

According to Virendra Tripathy, the organization used a variety of recruitment methods to attract women from poor families with different educational and social backgrounds.

“At the outset, it was very difficult to get girls out of their homes. We made several visits to the homes of these girls to persuade their parents to send their children to the classrooms,” says Tripathy.

“To achieve that,” he said, “we organized extensive promotional activities including visiting their homes to convince their parents.”

The Microsoft Unlimited Potential curriculum teaches women elementary computer skills, such as how to use Windows operating systems, surf the Internet, and work with the Microsoft Office Suite.