How Digital Empowerment Foundation is Using Technology for COVID-19 Relief in India
Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) was started in 2002 with the aim of connecting “unreached and underserved communities of India in an effort to to bring them out of digital darkness and equip them with access to information.” The organization has responded instantaneously to the pandemic, providing digital relief to various communities across India.
The Peace Innovation Institute spoke to the Founder of DEF, Osama Manzar about the importance of digitization in rural communities, the impact of COVID-19 and the relief work done by DEF since the proclamation of a nationwide lockdown in India on the 25th of March.
ABOUT DEF
DEF is one of India’s leading organizations working on combating information poverty and the lack of digital infrastructure in rural India. Their presence has been marked in more than 500 locations across 126+ districts of 23 Indian states and union territories. Their motto is to empower people at the edge of information.
The idea of DEF was born while Manzar was co-authoring a book, The Internet Economy of India in 2000. The existence of a digital divide motivated him to incorporate rural communities into the digital sphere. The larger problem he sought to solve was inefficient information flow that led to information poverty.
They have 6 major areas of work:
Access and infrastructure
Education and employment
Governance and citizen services
Marketing and social enterprises
Knowledge hub and network
Research and advocacy.
With a network of more than 10,000 digital foot soldiers, DEF has made constant efforts to make rural communities self-reliant. Some of their flagship campaigns include “Internet Saathi”, an initiative to empower women by making them digitally literate. It has reached over 5 million women and girls in more than 10,000 villages. Another highly impactful campaign has been “Fighting Misinformation” which aims to create “an environment for accurate and verified information.” More than 2300 people have been trained in simple verification techniques in 5 states so far. They have also successfully made 45,20,550+ made digitally literate through their “Community Information Resource Centres”.
DEF’S COVID-19 RESPONSE
The 21-day lockdown in response to COVID-19 was announced on the night of 24th March. This was later extended until 31st May. Many daily wage workers were affected overnight when their workplaces were shut and most employees and contractors who paid them vanished. Most of these workers had migrated to urban centers from rural areas, and were now left isolated. As the inter-state borders were shut and transportation services were not in operation, many migrant workers decided to walk back to their villages. According to the BBC “some travelled for a few hundred kilometres, while others covered more than a thousand to go home.” Current estimates show that more than 30 million people were displaced because of the lockdown.
Another major problem that emerged was of connectivity and communication . Given the lack of access to information in rural India, many were concerned about how communities would react to the sudden closure.
With a footprint of over 700+ digitally enabled Community Information Resource Centers and 10,000 digital foot-soldiers across the country, DEF was extremely important in the COVID-19 relief process. They instantaneously responded to the crisis by launching the COVID-19 Digital Emergency Relief Program (C-DREP). It aimed to provide support on 4 fronts:
Information, Awareness and Fighting Fake News
Provision of SOS Food and Livelihood
Complete Corona Prevention Information Toolkit
Access to Government’s COVID-19 Entitlements
The relief packages for “Information, Awareness and Fighting Fake News” included awareness generation using a Covid19 resource kit, creating a feedback and grievance window, building virtually closed, connected, informed communities and data collection of research and advocacy. They also delivered essential commodities through service requests, created a directory of food and shelter locations and networked with the administration, storage facilities and supply chains.
Access to healthcare was a big concern for COVID-19 response in rural India as they did not have well developed centers. DEF initiated tele-health and telemedicine support, offered counselling and consultation services, assisted in the production of masks and sanitisers by holding online information sessions for people in rural areas, and created a comprehensive directory of health centres and counseling. They also played an integral role in ensuring the reach of government initiatives by providing information on government schemes, ensuring direct benefit transfer to farmers, labourers, pensioners and others and facilitating digital financial services.
Stories from the ground about DEF’s work are nothing short of inspiring. Aslam Khan, a farmer who learnt how to use Google’s Digital Assistant from DEF’s information center said “Google Assistant has changed my life. From getting answers to my queries to switching on my phone’s torch just by talking into my phone, (it) has made life much easier for an illiterate like me. I don’t know how I would have remained informed about current government announcements and schemes around Covid-19 without this.”
It’s centers also played an active role in helping information about masks reach the disconnected. DEF’s center in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh provided local women training on how to stitch masks with minimum resources. DEF effectively used the Fogg Behavior Model to increase local initiative in production of masks.
The prompt in the form of the health risk was already present.
They initially provided the team with all the materials needed, which reduced their personal expense and gave them the ability to produce masks.
They then motivated the team by providing effective training and emphasizing on the opportunity to create an alternate livelihood and become entrepreneurs.
They have replicated the same model across India to great effect, empowering women and creating many local entrepreneurs in the process.
Another inspiring story comes from Rajasthan where Rahul, a differently-abled person whose family depended on a government pension was unable to claim it and contacted Irfan, a DEF digital center coordinator. The incident inspired Irfan to initiate a process of ‘home-delivering banking services’ to help people of the surrounding villages and now provides a door-to-door facility of offering digital services.
Another addition to C-DREP, DEF is also working to connect, track and serve internally displaced migrant workers. They’re actively live tracking 150,000 distressed migrant labourers through dedicated toll free numbers, and communicating with the local administration and civil groups to ensure their well-being. They are also currently conducting an ‘Ethnographic Study’ on migrant labourers to “assess the impact of unprecedented crisis on them from diverse perspectives and a way forward.” Their aim is to capture key moments of the participant’s experience in as true a form as possible. They have also launched an online survey in 4 states, which have been critically affected by the reverse migration process. 1000 impacted migrant labourers are being targeted to understand and address various lacunae at the ground level under DEF’s eight programmatic themes, which drives organisation’s key initiatives on the ground.
Taking cognizance of the digital divide and urgent need of reskilling, upskilling and training people, DEF has initiated ‘30 days Digital Skilling Programme’ in five most affected states—Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh. They aim to identify 100 young migrant workers with the aptitude of acquiring digital skills. Comprehensive training on developing digital infrastructure and providing essential digital services will be offered to them. The anticipated outcome is to equip participants with skills to create effective digital infrastructure like setting up wireless infrastructure for the rural communities; facilitating e-learning in village schools; providing e-banking services at the door steps; and building e-health infrastructure in remote locations.
The latest of DEF’s campaigns includes Digital Daan, a donation drive that aims to address the existing digital divide in India. Talking about the ethos of the campaign, Manzar said “having a smartphone doesn’t mean I can go for an online class or afford a broadband connection. Plus, in a patriarchal country, the drop-out rate and exclusion of girls is going to be much higher. We need to look at digital infrastructure for the digitally excluded.” The campaign aims to collect and encourage people to donate all kinds of old and used (but functional) Smart phones, Laptops, Tablets, Desktop/Computer (Monitors & CPU), Printers, Projectors, Camera & Camera lens through their 700 centres across 25 states and 130 districts located in rural, tribal, marginalized and unreached areas - enabling people in multiplier effect using real-life crowd-sourcing, bridging the digital divide and providing equality of opportunity to all.
Conclusion
The pandemic reshaped opportunities and challenges for many non-profit organizations. By assessing the situation and designing solutions targeted to COVID-19 relief and at the same retaining its mission to digitally empower communities. You can read more about DEF here.
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