Seelampur Community ICT Centre in India Celebrates First Anniversary
23-04-2004 (New Delhi)
The Seelampur Community ICT Centre, an ICT learning centre for girls and women located in a high-density, low-income area in India's capital New Delhi, recently celebrated its first anniversary. The UNESCO/Datamation Foundation supported project aims at training girls and women in the use of ICT to improve their life conditions.
The centre uses interactive multimedia tools to support vocational and life-skills training to poor girls and women, including awareness building on health issues and food preservation and support to professional activities such as tailoring and quilt-making.
The Centre is equipped with a server, four computers with Internet access, a scanner and a printer. In addition, the local community needs based browser "EnRICH " links the community to information, including 40 different income generation specialties and health care modules that will enable the youth and women to lead healthier lives apart from earning sustainable incomes.
For celebrating the anniversary, the Centre hosted the women and community members who have been associated with Seelampur. It was an emotional moment for many women who not only acquired basic knowledge of ICT but also enhanced their innate design skills. A large number of them reported on the positive impact of the Centre in their lives. They told how they acquired self-confidence, developed communication skills and improved their understanding of health, empowerment and education.
The Seelampur Centre is one of nine project sites covering a range of poor individuals and communities in a variety of technology mixes. Each one has a different social and technological access model that aim to addresses both the root cause of poverty and barriers to ICT usage by poor. A trained research worker in each site feeds the research findings regularly to the project to ensure the adaptability of the access model to suit the evolving usage needs. Working with parallel UNESCO initiatives, the projects are operated in partnership with NGOs, governments, universities, private companies, media and technology groups as well as poor women, youth and their families.
The Centre is equipped with a server, four computers with Internet access, a scanner and a printer. In addition, the local community needs based browser "EnRICH " links the community to information, including 40 different income generation specialties and health care modules that will enable the youth and women to lead healthier lives apart from earning sustainable incomes.
For celebrating the anniversary, the Centre hosted the women and community members who have been associated with Seelampur. It was an emotional moment for many women who not only acquired basic knowledge of ICT but also enhanced their innate design skills. A large number of them reported on the positive impact of the Centre in their lives. They told how they acquired self-confidence, developed communication skills and improved their understanding of health, empowerment and education.
The Seelampur Centre is one of nine project sites covering a range of poor individuals and communities in a variety of technology mixes. Each one has a different social and technological access model that aim to addresses both the root cause of poverty and barriers to ICT usage by poor. A trained research worker in each site feeds the research findings regularly to the project to ensure the adaptability of the access model to suit the evolving usage needs. Working with parallel UNESCO initiatives, the projects are operated in partnership with NGOs, governments, universities, private companies, media and technology groups as well as poor women, youth and their families.
Related themes/countries
· India: News Archive 2004
· Gender and ICT: News Archives 2004
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- UNESCO New Delhi
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