Synopsis of Women's ICT-Enabled and Based Enterprise Workshop, Delhi
rosaline
KNOWLEDGE PARTNERS
Tie (The Indus Enterpreneurship), IDPM, DFID
DATAMATION FOUNDATION
SYNOPSIS OF THE CAPACITIY ENHANCEMENT PROGRAMME
"Connected Opportunities:
Making a Difference with Women's ICT-Enabled and Based Enterprise "
Training Dates: Thursday 25th & Friday 26th October 2007
Duration: 16 Hours (Two Days)
Venue: Indian Society for Training & Development,
B-41, Institutional Area, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi-110016, India
Introduction
The workshop was for a focused group of organisations working on ICTs
for Women to further strengthen organizational capacities through
utilization of ICTs for Women, while also benefiting others at large
in the process of knowledge sharing.
Several ICT initiatives have already been established and ICT is being
used not only for educational development, policy advocacy, and local
governance and in many more areas but have facilitated employment,
income and skill generation in enterprises worldwide. However, the
benefits have rarely been accessible by the poorest groups in society
and the two day workshop contributed to help increase awareness and
integration of the number of sustainable ICT-enabled and ICT-based
enterprises run by groups of women in developing countries to benefit
local communities.
Participants of the workshop
Ms.Lata Chauhan The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)
Mr.Ajit Jadav The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)
Mr.Saajan Bhai Prajapati The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)
Mr.Jeetu Bhatt The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)
Dasharath Valard The Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (India)
Sumitha Initiatives: Women in Development (IWID)
Praffula Kurien NABARD
DH Lodh NABARD
Shanti Joshua NABARD
Ms. Anusha Chopra Lecturer, Lady Irwin College
Mr. Francis TLM Media Centre
Sukumar Bardhan TLM Media Centre
Dr Anima Sharma IL&FS
Ms. Karishma Kashyap Ahlcon International School
Ms. Ninu B. Nair Bharat Integrated Social Welfare Agency (B I S W A)
Amrita Kataria Stree Shakti - The Parallel Force
Md. Ataur Rab Humana India
Mr. Peter John Westman Joblinks
Suchi Gaur Student, Lady Irwin College
Priyanka Centre for Environment Education
Touba Alam National ICT Association of Afghanistan
R. Mathivathani Student, Delhi University (Gender & Society)
Mamta Malik Youth Employment Summit Fund
All Presentations can be viewed at: www.responsenet.org/
DAY 1: 25th OCTOBER 2007
9:30 am: Welcome speech by Responsenet about the workshop
Ms. Angela, of Responsenet welcomed the speakers for the workshop
along with 23 participants from various sectors and regions of India
and thanked them for coming together for sharing information,
knowledge and learning collectively.
10:00 AM - 11:45 AM - "Connected Opportunities" Where India Stands in
ICT
Collaborative Techniques/Methods of ICT for Development (Mr. Osama
Manzar - Digital
Empowerment Foundation)
Mr. Osama Manzar of Digital Empowerment Foundation started the first
session by asking the participants their expectations' from the
workshop? He put the participants into thinking mode and each one
answered of what they wanted to learn/ know more from the workshop.
The expectations highlighted by each participant were:
· To have a discussion in ICT & Development
· Positive case studies that have taken place in women enterprises
with respect to ICT
· Policies that can be framed by government on ICT
· How ICT can empower women at village level
· Various organizations working in the field of ICT
· Recent trends in ICT's
· How ICT can be used in currently running enterprises
· How ICT can be used for women's empowerment
· Want to know more on models that empower women based enterprises in
India that can be replicated in Afghanistan
· How to empower rural women through ICT
· How to develop enterprise in tribal women
· Understand the sustainability in ICT enabled enterprises
· Understand the Demand & Supply aspect in ICT
· How to create capacity to handle enterprises of ICT
· Want to know more ideas about ICT's in rural areas
What we see as a "technology" in India?
Then he mentioned that generally only Internet and PC's are perceived
as technology, but it encompasses more than that. He says that it
includes- Radio, TV, Web, DVD, CD, Camera, Video Camera, Mobiles,
Phones, Pager, PCO, Xerox, Cable, Printer, Narrow casting and much
more.
Mr. Osama also pointed out that between mobiles and phones we have 200
million users and, between radio and TV we have 300-million user
penetration, which therefore, we can use these media as real knowledge
dissemination media. He pointed out that 80% of India's population is
oral population, that means they are illiterate, but we want them to
use ICT, actually they don't need to be literate for using them. We
need to see what we should utilize and those should be adopted on a
daily basis. He said, technology has to work for humans and humans do
not have to work for technology. E.g. A Gujarati should not learn
English just because a PC works in English rather software can be
developed for a PC to work in Gujarati also.
The various problems in villages and how ICT can be related to each
one of these
For all the problems Mr. Osama cited case studies of NGO's and
villages where ICT's are being used to solve them.
1) Information & Knowledge
"Suchana se Samadhan" it uses local technology where people call,
register their complaints and get answers. Another example of Project
"Samvadh" in Sagar district, where they have got a time slot in the
radio, the expert reads out the complaints and gives answers on radio
itself and others listen to it, also, people can call live. It
includes the involvement of Public, Administration, and also there is
Technology being involved.
Mr. Osama also explained "narrow casting" and how it is different from
radio transmission.
2) Sanitation
For sanitation problem, he gave the example of "Gram vikas" in
Sambhalpur district. Here Gram Vikas did in rural areas what Sulabh
had done in urban areas. They built a model of a cheapest toilet. This
idea can be replicated by recording on Internet and DVD's and can be
showcased in other areas. Therefore, case studies can be propagated
using ICT's.
3) Employment
In the area of Employment, he gave the example of how Lakshwadeep
Island digitized their employment exchange, and after looking at it's
success the Ministry of Labour is now going to replicate this model
all over India. There are also Rural BPO's, where he gave the example
of Saloni Malhotra who has started a rural BPO in Tamilnadu called
'Desi Crew', where she employs only rural people for translation jobs.
Mr. Osama further added that it could be a viable idea for women
entrepreneurship as women are more punctual and can create more
employment.
4) Agriculture
Here he explained the concept of how India Agri-Business professionals
started the concept of
'e-chaupal' that answers complaints and queries of farmers online by
various agricultural experts. He also discussed 'esagu', 'aaqua' who
are working on the same lines.
5) Education
He gave further account of Education and ICT go hand in hand by
providing case studies of many NGO's like SEWA, INDUSTREE, BAREFOOT
COLLEGE, JAGOREE, and SISU SAMRAKSHAK who use ICT for education. He
also added that educational CD's are used in computers these days for
children to study various subjects
A very interesting case study he gave was of "Honey bee" a grass root
level innovation organization who have a collection of 50,000 rural
innovations e.g. Rural fridge, well pulley stopper, motorcycles for
handicaps etc. He said that by visiting the website www.sristi.org and
following the link for honey bee; anyone online can access the
innovations and replicate it in their areas.
He also talked about how children are using technology, how curriculum
content is made on the computer, and how teachers and administrative
staff use computer for school's working. To support this he gave the
example of Uttaranchal where each and every secondary school has a
computer lab with back up system.
The most interesting case study Mr. Osama shared with the audience was
a movie 'Raghav Radio'. It was about a 20-year-old village boy in
Bihar who developed a Radio transmitter that can send signals up to 15
km radius. The information Raghav put on his radio programmes were-
songs, health information, political rally information, pulse polio
programmes etc. All his programmes were community driven and on
community demand.
Lastly, Mr. Osama highlighted the three major services that will work
in rural areas according to his experience and his researches:
· Education through computers
· Governance and,
· Commercial
Mr. Osama concluded the session and said that how even after the
workshop everyone can continue to work together on these problems, as
"all the participant organizations are ambassadors of knowledge of ICT
in the areas they are working in, and will surely take back this
knowledge in their areas and implement it."
12:00 - 01:00 PM Benefits of ICT-Enabled and ICT-Based Enterprises
(Mr. V.N. Shukla, CDAC)
Mr. Shukla is a Technocrat; he is into artificial intelligence and
data mining (a concept which he later elaborated in his talk). He
talked about how this technology is to help various enterprises and
also gave examples of technologies, which have potential for
entrepreneurship. He mentioned about the two projects, which are being
supported by the Department of Information Technology:
1) Language Computing- its usage in ICT is a must, as Indians do not
speak one single language at a moment. We can develop interface with
ICT tools to develop a new technology. For e.g. Hindi language tool
can be distributed to the masses; these tools are downloadable from
the Internet for which no payment is needed.
2) Universal Digital Library- project started by Dr. Raj Reddy. Here
digitized books are available on the Internet. Only 15% of the books
available are copyrighted and rest are for free, therefore 75% of the
chunk can be digitized and put on the internet for the masses, and
within 4 years of time we can generate 2 million books online through
ICT. Women can be taught the easy process of digitization of books.
To what kind of applications is ICT possible?
All technologies do not fit into one application; there are
limitations to it. The IT applications he highlighted are:
1) IT solutions for IT- this is technology working for technology. For
this one needs infrastructure.
2) IT solutions for Business
3) IT solutions for Services- e.g. BPO's
The cross section of women in India who want to use technology for
entrepreneurship (according to his experience) come under 3
categories:
1) Educated ladies who use technology (first hand basis)
2) Village women who do not use any technology
3) Educated homemakers who are well educated but home bound but have
some free time with her, which she can use to work online for content
creation or other online tasks.
He expressed that women can be involved in meta-data creation,
transferring books online. Internet connectivity is used here and also
educated women can be involved in many stages even for approving the
content of books. E.g. Within one and half years of time Mr. Shukla
could cover up 0.7 million books (online) by above example. Certain
books which cannot be read by people for e.g. fragile and very old
books can also be put online for the whole world to read, a task which
can be easily done by women.
Mr. Shukla illustrated that IT actually means I+T, which is equal to
'me' (I) and the 'whole world' (T). He also explained some terms like
- website, portal, vortal and hortal to the delegates. He declared
that women can bring up the dot com business.
For Mr. Shukla's presentation visit the website - www.cdacnoida.in.
and his email address- vnsh...@cdacnoida.in
02:00 PM - 02:45 PM - Case studies of successful rural women IT based /
IT enabled enterprises. Mrs. Geeta Malhotra (One World South Asia)
Geeta Malhotra started her session by showing a film to the
participants "Transforming women through ICT: Case Studies of
Successful rural women IT based & IT enabled enterprises". The film
showed two cases studies, one of Nepal and the other of India. It was
on empowering and strengthening women by using various ICT tools.
One World South Asia has developed a network of women Panchayats and
development tools on print and Internet, collected stories and voices
from communities as knowledge lies with them only.
Following the movie, some pictures were also shown to the audience
depicting how women are using various ICT's.
Women, ICT & Entrepreneurship
Geeta Malhotra emphasized on the need to address the following in
Women ICT Entrepreneurship:
a) Capacity building
b) Content development
c) Coordination
d) Care & Management
She said that the above-mentioned areas should be brought together to
empower women where IT can play a catalytic role in empowering women.
Also added that the economic level of women increases by using ICT's
and also ICT empowers social groups, artisans and SHG's.
RADIO as a Promotion Tool
She also highlighted that Radio makes passive listeners into active
broadcasters. Community radio programmes are only on those issues,
which the community needs where communities can tell stories and share
with the whole world.
Emphasizing on the way forward she said that the public has to come
forward. There has to be public management, vigilance and
participation.
The session was continued with a Question and Answer Interaction
Q. In a village how many computer centers can be there?
A. One advocacy center can have 2-3 villages covered, also depending
on the area and physical structure of the village.
Q. What is the profile of the girls who are given trainings?
A. Std. 10th onwards.
Q. For how long does capacity building go on?
A. One training programme is of 3-5 days and 4-5 training programmes
are done.
Q. Do the girls get employment?
A. Yes, girls get appointed by AIR and Jamia for jobs.
Q. What kind of training is given to people in radio?
A. Radio programming and production.
Q. Do the radio programmes have certain slots?
A. We promote by narrow casting and OSA also gives CD's.
Q. What does Radio enhance?
A. Knowledge enhancement and also one can record a success story over
radio and disseminate it to other places.
Q. Can civil society start with community radio?
A. 50% content should come from community and the rest by the help
from the NGO.
Q. Has Community Radio come up anywhere?
A. No, it is yet to be popularized, only narrow casting is being done
as yet
Q. What is the concept of 'Soochna se Samadhan'?
A. It is a network of farmers who network with a knowledge worker who
has a mobile phone. The knowledge worker has organizational support
that gives the answer back to the farmer.
Q. Is the phone toll free?
A. No, it is very difficult to get a toll free number, but it is a
reliance number and the farmer only pays a nominal cost.
THE ICT SITUATIONS SHE MENTIONED ARE:
1) Cost - The reality is that, only the NGO's who have funds can
implement ICT programs. E.g. in Bangladesh, the cost of IT in one
house can feed that house for a month.
2) Geographic Location- this is a negative factor for women as
sometimes they have to travel great distance to reach the centre. The
neighborhood also might be unsafe.
3) Constraints in capacity building - women need to be trained in
technical skills first. She has to organize herself first. Women's
participation needs to be streamlined.
4) Connectivity - is a challenge in hilly areas as power may not be
there, machine might not be compatible.
5) Availability and simplicity of content - women have to have the
knowledge of page maker, English language etc.
6) Institutional support - for success there has to be support from
the family,organisation and community also.
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE PARTICIPANTS
The participants were engaged in discussion, and the recommendations
that came out for promoting ICT were:
1) Staff members should be given adequate training.
2) Curriculum of the training should be made and certificates for the
courses should be there.
3) Short-term e-learning courses should be there on health, education
etc.
4) Organizational support is necessary to implement ICT, as the
community cannot do something by themselves alone.
5) NGO's can come to NABARD for assistance.
HER SESSION WAS CONCLUDED WITH A MOVIE ON PAPER PLATE MAKING
The efforts of Kalyanam an NGO and the involvement of SHG's in an
income generation activity were shown to the audience through video.
Therefore, in the dissemination and popularization of successful
income generation activities can be shown using ICT also.
Madam Geeta added that there is a dearth of e-content and therefore
there is a need to collect successful case stories like these and to
show to other people in workshops like one we are attending.
Agha Khan Rural Support Foundation showed another ICT Awareness
Generation Programme CD. It was a mass communication awareness
programme by Microsoft. Medium of Street play was used to tell
community people about the 'Naya Zamana' of ICT. The play also showed
that how computer can be useful even for a farmer. Therefore, one more
case study was shown to all the delegates via ICT.
DAY 2 - 26th OCTOBER 2007
The second day was started with the summary of the first day by Ms.
Anusha Chopra from Responsenet, which was then continued with a GOOGLE
APPS presentation by Mr. Kuldip Nar from Responsenet.
This was followed by a Presentation by Mamta Malik from YES FUND.
10:00 AM - 01:30 PM - The Enterprise Perspective in Planning and
Managing Women's ICT-Based Enterprise (Mr. Chetan Sharma, Datamation
Foundation)
Mr. Chetan Sharma started by giving a brief on what he will cover in
his presentations, with a special focus on- how women ICT enterprise
can be possible, how to locate and retain customers.
Mr. Chetan Sharma put forth a question to all delegates that 'what is
the motive of undergoing the CEP in ICT?'
The answers that came from the delegates' were-
· How can we actually use ICT in rural areas?
· This would be an opportunity for us to network with other ICT
organizations,
· We want to know how it can generate employment and empower women
using ICT's,
· To get more ideas on best practices and case studies in ICT,
After gaining an insight as to what the participants expected from the
workshop Mr. Chetan proceeded and said that ICT is an enabler; it
provides a unique opportunity to facilitate a process. He also gave a
brief introduction/preview of his organization- Datamation Foundation
and also what Datamation is doing in the area of ICT.
Mr. Chetan said that technology is easy to learn but learning soft
skills, personality development and confidence building is also
important (especially for women). His view is that the Indian ICT
sector is very internationally focused, there is lack of confidence in
the Indian domestic market, and India is reduced to only a processing
hub when we can do much more.
He expressed that ICT brings advocacy and convenience and for people
in this area the possibilities are immense.
After tea, Mr. Chetan moved onto a more participatory approach where
he asked from the participants "What is a risk in ICT?" From the
discussions, three points were generated that- there is risk of
sustainable livelihood, obsolescence and risk to health. Mr. Chetan
expressed that ICT can be a tool for risk mitigation. He further went
on to explain how risk mitigation can be achieved by using ICT's and
then ICT can take care of health, education, livelihoods, sustenance
etc.
Then he shared a case study of a Gender Resource Center of Seelampur,
where community multimedia centre is set up for women, and also an
online Seelampur mart was set up for women to showcase and sell the
products made by women themselves.
He explained that ICT is uni-polar, and women get an avenue for
expression and creativity through ICT. He continued his presentation
by showing the slides where women and girls learn from CD's made by
Datamation Centre. There were CD's made on all kinds of income
generation activities like soap making, basket weaving, beauty
culture, mehandi, embroidery etc. These CD's could also be
disseminated to NGO's where they want to train women on any particular
activity. He stressed that the real challenge is- mobility and
accessibility to use ICT.
Mr. Chetan also described the sustainability indictors of ICT projects
for development. Namely- viability, sustainability, commercial
activities, technology and empowerment.
He moved on to talk about the Government's Role in ICT where, the
government has a commitment to reduce the administrative cost and to
enhance the delivery of the services. He also gave the advantages of
'e-governance', that it is simple, accountable, responsible and
transparent. Here NGO's can also partner with the government on
delivering ICT services. He also mentioned of the 'National e-
governance plan'.
After the presentation, the participants were also involved in an
exercise by Mr. Chetan Sharma. The participants had to think out what
could be the investments needed to set up a women's ICT enterprise for
5 women on e-governance. Everybody got highly involved in the exercise
by finding the costs, risks and the other logistics involved in
starting up and running the enterprise for and by the women. After the
exercise, Mr. Chetan Sharma concluded his session commenting that
"there are no financially viable and independent successful run ICT
for development run projects for women, they are mostly supported by
government, grants or bank loans. He welcomes the participants to
write to him for guidance and knowledge support, which he would be
very happy to take forward for the cause.
02:30 PM - 03:30 PM -Role of Multilateral Agencies in Supporting and
Promoting Women's ICT-Enabled and ICT-Based Enterprises by Mrs.
S.Mishra (Drishtee Foundation)
The presentation was on what Drishtee as an organization does, the
services it provides and the role of a support agency. Drishtee helps
in the development of rural economy and society through ICT, which is
sustainable. Mrs. Mishra informed that the pace of ICT's had a
speedier and deeper impact on the structures and practices than any
other revolution.
Mrs. Mishra also discussed the advantages, limitations and challenges
of ICT to women. It was followed by a round of discussion between the
participating organizations and Drishtee Foundation. Mrs. Mishra also
answered many queries of the participants.
More information on Drishtee Foundation support initiatives can be
viewed at: www.responsenet.org/
THE LAST SESSION OF THE TWO DAY WORKSHOP WAS AN INTERACTIVE SESSION ON
WHETHER CREATING AN ALLIANCE IS REQUIRED TO STRENGTHEN THE WOMEN IN
ICT
Moderators: Mrs. Geeta Malhotra & Mrs. Swapna Mishra
This was the final session of the last two days workshop on the ways
forward. Where do we go from here? Do we need to have an alliance to
create a cell where anyone can get information or resources?
Mrs. Swapna said that the idea is that there should be inclusion of
families or people those who are around women also to increase
sustainability and take it forward, therefore we have to look at
inclusion related activities. We can demonstrate a successful case
study of a good woman kiosk owner and show her as a role model.
In the feedback session the participants and speakers gave their
opinions and contributed to the objectives of the needs of creating an
alliance. The participants discussed the points on what the alliance
could contribute to.
Alliance is needed to replicate any need-based model. It can help in
exposure, people can see examples. The ongoing good practices and case
studies could be shared with the civil society or replicated in the
other parts of the rural communities where ICT's can be used for
empowerment and earning livelihoods for women. There can be sharing of
ideas and convergence can also be there. Tie-ups with many
organizations can be made and more over their services can be tied up.
It can do marketing and value addition. Mandate of the alliance would
be to work towards the needs. Many groups would come together and
join this alliance later as this is the need of the day. Therefore an
alliance is very much needed.
5:00 PM - Conclusion of the Two Days Workshop on "Connected
Opportunities: Making a Difference with Women's ICT-Enabled and Based
Enterprise "
Before concluding the session, feedbacks were taken from the
participants to understand the understanding level of the
participants, understand how we can follow up with the participants
after 6 months and which all-important sessions we missed out which
could be integrated in our future workshops. Responsenet honoured
Geeta Malhotra and Swapna Mishra to hand over the certificates to the
participants and wishing them the best in the initiatives they take up
and also offering them guidance on support required to make the
initiatives run successfully.
Some of the websites suggested by the speakers are:
www.datamationindia.com
http://www.darpg.nic.in/awards2004.asp
www.icrisat.org
www.globalknowledge.org
http://www.defindia.net
http://www.social-impact.org
http://www.manthanaward.org
http://www.econtentworldwide.org
http://www.wsis-award.org
Presentations for the Connected Opportunities workshop can be
downloaded from the following links:
Case studies of successful rural women IT based /IT enabled
enterprises. Geeta Malhotra (One World South Asia)
The Enterprise Perspective in Planning and Managing Women's ICT-Based
Enterprise ( Chetan Sharma, Datamation Foundation)
Role of Multilateral Agencies in Supporting and Promoting Women's ICT-
Enabled and ICT-Based Enterprises by S.Mishra (Drishtee Foundation)
Presentation by Mamta Malik from YES FUND, Global Fund for Youth
Entrepreneurship