Putting ICTs into the hands of the minority women of an Indian ghetto for their economic empowerment

Author : Chetan Sharma
Date added : 2003-09-25

Brief Project Background

The project owes its genesis to several background factors viz.
--Lack of higher and professional education amongst the Indian minorities specifically amongst the women and their consistent economic deprivation and backwardness.
--Low penetration of Information and Communications (ICT) technologies amongst the minority women.
--Inability of the minority women to use ICTs for the advancement of their businesses.
The reasons for targeting the minority Muslim community are many and not too difficult to comprehend. The community has historically been one of the most backward, poor and marginalized not only in India but in several parts of the world as well. The per capita income of the minority community compared to the average national income in both urban as well as in rural India is very low. Joblessness-full as well as partial estimated around 35 per cent--and lack of even primary education amongst large percentage of the population is one of the highest in the country. The school drop out rate-estimated approx. 55%-- amongst the women is very high. Large section of the minority community in India lives in sheltered ghettos, segregated from the majority community.

The lives of the minority community in large parts of India have been engulfed by successive rounds of communal violence, bigotry and riots. The communal violence has not only left deep impact on the psyches of the people; but has further strengthened the ghetto mentality. The demolition of the Babri Masjid and large scale riots occurring in large parts of the country in the aftermath of the demolition of the mosque apart from last year’s violence in the state of Gujarat wherein more than 2000 people were killed; have left deep scars in the minds of the people. Consequently the people tend to cling to their religious-forces (“ulemas”) as well as to the conventional socio-economic practices of the ghettos. This attitude has significantly isolated a large section from the people living outside ghetto; increasing their sense of isolation.

These factors motivated us to develop the Community Multi-media and ICT Center concept in mid-2002. We were convinced about the relevance of ICTs for the suppressed minority women of the country; and selected Seelampur-Zaffarabad a pre-dominant minority ghetto located in North-East Delhi-India’s capital city for geographic proximity apart from pitiable state of the women in the area.

We also decided to apply for support under the aegis of UNESCO’s ICTs for poverty alleviation as part of UNESCO’s cross-cutting theme. Fortunately UNESCO saw merit in the proposal and decide to support the project in December 2002 not only by way of funding but also by providing us several communications inputs relevant for the communications, information and income generation needs of the minority women of Seelampur.

The goals of Seelampur ICT Center Project for the economic empowerment of the women are:

**Promotion of voice and empowerment through communication. Assess impact of ICTs on the overall integration of the minority women and youth in the society outside the "ghetto"

**Localize appropriate communication and information networks.

**Link resource poor women and youth to the information and tools for knowledge management.

**Link ICT's for establishing market and business linkages towards eradication of absolute poverty. The Datamation Foundation facilitates marketing and business enablement by getting orders and constant mentoring
as well as business counselling

The partners and stakeholders of the Project are :

(a) Most important partner of the Seelampur Community ICT Center project is the Babool-ulm Madarsa an Islamic religious educational organization. The Madarsa is affiliated to one of the most revered Islamic shrine in the South Asia apart from serving as the custodian of “Shariat” Islamic law. Despite deep focus on spirituality and religion; Babool-ulm-Madarsa ventured forward and accepted Datamation Foundation’s offer to house the Community ICT Center in its premises. For the Foundation housing of the Community ICT Center in the Madarsa meant greater, unhindered and participatory involvement of the community apart from getting backing of the religious ulemas.

(b) The Delhi Govt. and its Departments of Social Welfare, Women Empowerment have been equal stakeholders in the implementation of the project so that the benefit of various schemes and projects of Delhi Govt. trickle back to the women.

(c) Private sector companies including small and medium businesses have been very enthusiastic supporters of the women. They have been mentoring the women in their quest for skills enhancement; apart from sharing with them practical knowledge. These inputs have helped the women improve the quality of their products as well as enhancing the competitiveness of the products made by the women. Few businesses have come forward and given women orders for their products and services. They have promised them continuing business provided the women maintain quality standards and fair pricing.

Vocational Institutions and Academia have been active participants of the project. The support of these institutions viz. Delhi University, Jamia Milia Islamic University has been critical for facilitating the skills improvement and income generation capabilities

Project implementation team and roles :
.
The project is being implemented by the Datamation Foundation (a non-profit organization) registered by the Govt. of India. By law we are mandated to get our accounts audited by the statutory auditors as an internal practice. In addition the auditors appointed by the donor agencies also audit and inspect the accounts to ensure compliance and accountability. A budgeting process has been implemented effectively by Datamation. We have ensured compliance with the budgeting norms apart from ensuring there is no deviation from the budgeted line items.

The project is managed by Ms. Sarita Sharma-Board Member of Datamation Foundation and Action Researcher on a day to day basis. She has been spending most of her time for last one year with the Seelampur Community. She is supported by the below members of the team:

--Mentor mother: She has been assigned the responsibility of mobilizing the women from the community to use the ICT Center and undergo a skills improvement process with the help of ICTs.

--Center Manager: The Center Manager has the responsibility of day to day delivery of course ware to the women apart from ensuring upkeep of the computer hardware and peripherals.

--Desk Manager: The Desk Manager operates enrich the local community browser that helps the women to retrieve information needs as per their needs. The Desk Manager localizes the information for the women apart from translating the content.

--Subject matter experts: For developing course materials; we have been engaging SMEs depending on their core competence such as tailoring, embroidery, weaving, candle-making, carpet designing, stationary production and other specialties.

Management structure: The management structure of the project is:

**Mrs. Sarita Sharma is from the Project Management team. Mrs. Sarita Sharma is also the Ethnographic Action-Researchers.

**Day to day management of the Center has been entrusted to a Management Group of 10 women who supervise the management of the Community ICT Center apart from supervising the work of the Center Manager and Desk Manager.

We deploy sophisticated project management tools including local community browser enrich for monitoring & tracking of the results. A step-by step overview of the Datamation Foundation’s action research and monitoring process being implemented at

Results

Till date more than 500 women have been trained in a large number of skills-development and income enhancement vocations. A large of women have started getting orders from the buyers directly through the buyer-seller linkages after the Datamation Foundation has facilitated buyer-seller interface.

The project has conclusively demonstrated :

**Language or education are not the barriers for socially and economically disadvantaged women gaining access and proficiency in ICTs

**By a systematic combination of mentoring. counselling & training in local language it is possible even for lesser skilled women to enhance their skills with the aid of ICTs and earn sustainable livelihoods by the use of ICTs

**That if appropriate support mechanism is provided, the informal sector of the economy and the SMEs can not only be enabled by ICTs but also have the potential to absorb a large part of the growing women labor force in the developing countries.

**ICTs enjoy the unique potential to promote productive & remunerative employment for the minority women. Consequently this is helping the minority women to emerge out of perpetual cycle of poverty, exploitation, social exclusion and low bargaining power. Moreover equality of opportunities and treatment between men & women has been ensured by the enablement of the small businesses by the ICTs.

Lessons

The lessons learnt from this project are :

I. Strategic use of ICTs.

Never before ICTs have been deployed amongst the socially and economically disadvantaged women to an extent as has happened in this project. Moreover the ICTs have been introduced for the minority women in the premises of a highest seat of Islamic learning viz. the Madarsa that has always remained an “all-male” preview.

Deployment of the multi-media content in local languages is another strategic step. Usage of the multi-media content for skills enhancement and income generation covering over 40 specialties is yet another strategic use of the ICTs.

II. Mobilizing awareness and participation of the minority women and building their capacities : :.

For the socially and economically disadvantaged minority women of the Seelampur ghetto to start using ICTs has been a major challenge apart from accomplishment. In this ghetto, even completion of high school despite availability of all forms of free schooling facilities available by the Govt.; mobilization has been a big hurdle. However enlistment of services of mentor mother helped in the mobilization of the community apart from location of the ICT Center within the premises of the Babool-ulm-Madarsa also helped mobilize the participants. We distributed printed pamphlets in the area for spreading awareness about the Community ICT Center.

Maulana Zafar-uddin Head of the Babool-ulm-Madarsa played a significant role in ensuring the mobilization of the women. After these initial mobilization efforts made by the community; we did have not face any hurdles in the enrolment of the women in the Community ICT Center. In fact the women have been participating very enthusiastically in the training and capacity building initiatives of the Foundation. Even taboo subjects such as women’s reproductive rights, health issues apart from life-skills, marriage rights and obligations are also included in the capacity building initiatives. These have been covered extensively in the multi-media course ware developed by the Datamation Foundation.

Our effort has been to ensure participation of the weakest of the weak and some of the most economically marginalized women from the minority community in the capacity building initiatives of the Datamation Foundation.

III. Contribution towards promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The Women who have not ventured out of their homes and also out of the ghettos un-accompanied have been enrolling themselves into the ICT Center in large numbers. More women are denied admissions than enrolled. More over a large number of women desire to use the ICT Center despite opposition from their family members. A large number of women use the ICT Center for very long hours despite having small children at home and other house hold duties. Women who have not engaged themselves in any form of work or income generating activity; have felt motivated to start their own businesses enabled by the ICTs. Their interest and motivation in this work surpasses even that of the men. Significantly the project has been contributing towards the development of the communication and information needs of the women in a very complex situation arising out of religious fundamentalism, claustrophobic existence and restricted movements. ICTs have given a mechanism to the women for expressing their creativity and inherent talent.

The women after getting trained in ICTs also encourage their families and children to learn computers and start using them in their day to day work.

With a multi-stakeholder platform; we shall be able to replicate the project in other Islamic countries.

Development Impacts

Various Development criterion have been kept in mind while designing and planning the project viz.

Sustainability : The services of the Community ICT Center have not been offered free of cost. On the contrary, the women have been paying a nominal amount of Rs. 50 per month (US$1.10) for accessing the Center. Moreover Datamation Foundation has a strong interest in sustaining the project from the revenues earned by Datamation Consultants Pvt. Ltd.

The Foundation has also set up a revenue model for the project wherein the buyer who gets linked with the women producers of products and services; pays the Foundation a fixed amount per annum as a transaction fee for merchandising with the women. These sources of income will ensure continuing sustainability of the project viz. the buyer of embroidery products made by the women of Seelampur will pay a fixed royalty to the Seelampur Community ICT Center.

However we would like to access donor funds for scaling up the project and for adding more computers, peripherals in the Community ICT Center. Since the project has been visited by a large number of Development Agencies viz. UNDP, IDRC, CIDA, SIDA we are confident of getting their support for the implementation of the project as well.

Replication : The challenge of minority Muslim women using ICTs is universal. Apart from ICTs for enabling informal communications and information networks; it is also necessary in the new millennium for the women to be gainfully engaged in an income generation activity. Consequently working for women is no longer a luxury but a necessity and in this process ICTs play a very significant role towards building of capacities and training the socially and marginalized women. Moreover we have succeeded in building a reservoir of Trainers who may be utilized for replicating the project in other parts of the world.

The skills enhancement and income generation activities carried out by the women have an inbuilt sustainability mechanism. The sustainability mechanism also ensures replication of the project elsewhere.

Project Information

Organisation : Datamation Foundation (registered non-profit organization)
URL : http://www.datamationindia.com and http://www.datamationfoundation.org
Total budget in US$ : Approx. US$50,000
Country of activity: India [IN]

Are there any partners involved : Babool-Ulm-Madarsa
What is partners role?: The Babool-ulm Madarsa is an Islamic religious educational organization. The Madarsa is affiliated to one of the most revered Islamic shrine in the South Asia apart from serving as the custodian of “Shariat” Islamic law. Despite deep focus on spirituality and religion; Babool-ulm-Madarsa ventured forward and accepted Datamation Foundation’s offer to house the Community ICT Center in its premises. For the Foundation housing of the Community ICT Center in the Madarsa meant greater, unhindered and participatory involvement of the community apart from getting backing of the religious ulemas.

Contact Information

Chetan Sharma
csharma@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in
VIMAL-SHREE, B-12 III/F Swasthya Vihar , 110 092 , Delhi , +91-11-22167230

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