Digital literacy has made inroads in the households of Dodda Devarapadu, a remote village in Veerullapadu mandal of Krishna district. Women of all age groups are able to surf the Internet for everything, including exam results of their wards to food recipes.
This is the turn out of efforts by a 32-year-old woman who ran a month-long door-to-door campaign to the 633 households of the village on the ‘Internet cycle’ with four Internet-enabled gadgets.
Muvva Mrudula, a mother of two, is the village’s ‘Internet Saathi’ who gave the much-needed exposure to women and children who had not seen a smart phone till a month ago.
Internet Saathi, a nation-wide joint initiative of Google India, in collaboration with Tata Trusts and Intel, selected and trained Mrudula to be the Saathi of this village. As part of the training, she has not only learnt to operate a smartphone but has also passed on her knowledge to 541 women in the village.
“I have been able to bring change in the lifestyle of many women in the village by introducing them to the Internet and some of them have even improved their livelihood”, Ms. Mrudula told The Hindu .
Mrudula’s friend, D. Lakshmi Swati, learnt to make a sweet variety through a recipe on YouTube. Another woman Swargam Radha, a class VIII dropout, has increased her earnings by stitching.
“I am able to stitch new models after learning latest designs from the Internet and I have started charging Rs. 300 per apparel as against Rs. 100 in the past”, said Radha.
Browsing for latest designer saris online is 59-year-old D. Kameswari’s favourite pastime. Now when Ms. Mrudula visits their house, women make a beeline to borrow a device and surf internet in the evenings. “Initially they were reluctant to learn using smartphone as they believed that it will not help them in anyway. But when I showed them some interesting features of the devices, they tried their hand on it”, said Mrudula.
Google India’s Chief Marketing Officer Sapna Chadha, who visited Ms. Mrudula on Friday, said that the initiative was meant to help women use internet and other devices as very few of them in India had access to it. “It is a grand start for the programme as women are able to easily learn things. They are able to help their families and also improve their livelihoods and most importantly access lot of information which was not possible earlier”, said Ms. Sapna. She is going around three southern states where the programme is initiated.
There are 110 Internet Saathis for 135 villages in Vijayawada parliamentary constituency and 12, 782 individuals, including women and children, have been trained so far. She said 1,747 of them had completed all three levels while 6836 were done with level 1.
