Digital Daana aims to enable access to digital education for 1 million underprivileged children in India.
As of February 2021, India had approximately 624 million internet users, perhaps thanks to the help from the government’s Digital India initiative in increasing internet penetration over the years. This while the population in India sits at 1,38 billion lives in 2020 and an estimated 1,39 billion this year. Although the number of internet users is expected to rise over time, more can be done to cover the remaining percentage left behind.
RELEVANT SUSTAINABLE GOALS
According to UNICEF, only up to 24% of all Indian households have internet facilities to access e-education, allowing for efficient online learning. As a result, children are suffering a learning loss due to being left out from the online education process, something the pandemic has only made worse and a (possible) complete shift to online learning instead. An OXFAM study even found that as many as 80% of Indian students struggle with accessing online teachings during the lockdown. This causes many to have to sacrifice their studies until offline classrooms are back in full swing.
The advancement of today’s technology and especially the digital world have aided people worldwide in handling countless crises and emergencies more efficiently than if we didn’t have such technologies. However, this divide in India creates yet another hurdle for people to fend for themselves during the pandemic, gatekeeping the unfortunate and benefitting only the more privileged.
SHRINKING THE GAP
Knowing all this, the Digital Daana team works together to remedy the situation. Organized by Metta Social and India Global, Digital Daana is an initiative working to enable the global Indian community to help & support underprivileged children in India and is currently aiming to build access to digital education for 1 million children by 2025. They have also partnered up with local NGOs and schools as the implementation partners, Indian industries and diaspora, education institutes, and local social impact organizations.
Their plan is to remedy the issue through a couple of methods. One of which is by providing Digital Kits to underprivileged students. This kit includes a laptop, a 4G internet connection for 2 years, and curated learning resources. It will be distributed to numerous locations, including Mumbai, Pune, Delhi/NCR, Bhopal, Indore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Guwahati Chandigarh, Panaji, with even more to come. The second part of their plan is to set up digital labs involving mobile labs for schools in remote areas. This, of course, is done so with the hope that their aid can reach even more private households and bridge the gap even more.
Digital Daana hopes to reach and support up to 10,000 young individuals in the 6 months of their program through resources and devices that help bridge the expanding digital divide, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Digital Daana hopes to reach and support up to 10,000 young individuals in the 6 months of their program through resources and devices that help bridge the expanding digital divide, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
STARTING THE JOURNEY
Digital Daana is an initiative by India Global and Metta Social, along with it’s associate partners, to give 10,000 laptops to students from lower-income backgrounds who are not equipped with e-learning solutions and devices. This initiative is driven by an ecosystem that can procure and encourage donors from the Indian diaspora to donate digital kits that can reach students across multiple states and districts with maximum digital transparency and accountability.
Help the Digital Daana team by donating to giving.digitaldaana.org or clicking the button below. Donations will gather the necessary resources for the digital kits that will later be distributed to underprivileged children and for building mobile digital vans as part of the mobile labs.
ABOUT METTA SOCIAL :
Metta Social is an enthusiastic, young team of individuals deeply rooted in social good who are passionate about doing good and delivering intelligent humane solutions with love, soul and creativity.nAs a for-profit social enterprise, we aim to deliver the seamless exchange of value within the social development ecosystem using bleeding-edge technology platforms.
