Until recently, Alfa Horo was just another tribal village lady, competing with similar fate and fortune of ladies in her village named Kumardih in Khunti district of Jharkhand.
Then one day she rubbed her finger on a smartphone for the first time, provided by Tata Trusts-cInI and Google India people which proved to be a ginny touch that changed her life completely and paved way for her to address audiences in National capital, followed by Jaipur which she could have never imagined even in her wildest dreams.
“I had heard that the internet has all the information, so I wanted to experience it on my own. If it was indeed true then I also wanted to take information to everyone else as well,” explains Alfa, who now proudly enlists ‘web surfing’ under her hobbies. She has been a part of the programme since its initiation in Jharkhand in November 2015 and has now trained more than 1,100 other individuals.
Before Alfa could turn an Internet Didi under Internet Saathi initiative of Mission 2020 – lakhpati Kisan: Smart Villages programme, under a joint initiative of Tata Trusts-cInI and Google India, students from Kumardih had to travel some 35 kilometres to find out their exam results as their village remained largely cut off due to its hilly terrain and lack of technology options with nobody in the village owning a smartphone. But now they are fortunate enough to get all those required information and many other things, too, just in their fingertips as dozens of village women have learned how to operate mobile phones and tablets and to get desired information from there.
Recognizing her initiative-taking and learning prowess, Google India invited Alfa to be a part of a panel at the Google For India day held on September 27, 2016 at New Delhi as well as the Stream India 2017 event held on February 15-18, 2017 at Jaipur. As a part of the panels, Alfa interacted with representatives from different countries, demonstrating her skills and sharing her experiences. Even in her personal life, she feels that she’s transformed from a very shy person to a confident individual, who can go out and speak to a group or give them training.
The Tata Trusts and Collectives for Integrated livelihood Initiatives (CInI) in a joint effort with Google India has reached out to more than 90,000 women from 514 villages in Jharkhand so far through their initiative. In a felicitation programme of these Internet saathis on Thursday, Tata Trusts-cInI officials said that 170 internet saathis have provided training to over 1,45,000 individuals, 90,000 among which are tribal women of 514 villages during last year.
CInI M&E Coordinator Md Moazzam said on Thursday that this first-of-its-kind intervention in digital literacy was one of the key aspects towards enhancing the overall quality of life of tribal communities, which was the goal under the Mission 2020 programme.
“Internet Saathi has helped address the digital gender disparity in rural areas of Jharkhand by facilitating digital literacy among rural women and making them aware of the benefits of the Internet. This has also enabled them to tap into the potential of the internet as a medium for digital livelihoods,” said Moazzam. Hundreds of trained tribal women under the programme and officials of Tata Trusts-cInI, Google India and others were also present on the
occasion.