Project inception year :

2017
Project area :

State Jharkhand, District Gumla,
Project reach :

15000 girls of age 13-19 years
Project Supported by :

Oracle
Brochure Download
Akanksha : Redefining Future
An initiative of C3 to help girls and young women of Jharkhand be a part of the digital revolution

Goal :

To enable 15000 young tribal girls to make better life choices by bridging the digital divide through basic ICT literacy and connecting them to educational and economic opportunities in Gumla district, Jharkhand

Need :

Ownership and use of digital technology contributes to forms of inequality — in earnings, networking opportunities, and access to information. Women in India are physically and economically isolated, the rise of low-cost mobile phones holds the promise of connecting women to social contacts, markets, information, and a growing range of value-added services like mobile banking and digital payments. However, women lag behind men when the task of using technology gets more advanced. The gap between making and receiving calls between men and women is between 15–20%, the gender gap jumps to 51% for a feature as simple as SMS and remains above 60% for other more complex activities such as social media.

Our program

Through project Akanksha, we are skilling the girls in critical 21st century skills, and exploiting the full potential of technology, to reduce gender imbalances by improving their ability, to access and have control over their resources. There is enough and more evidence that shows that digital skills will make young girls more confident, and with these new skills, they will take charge of their lives and future.
We designed and developed the curriculum with support from Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) as a combination of theories, interactive videos and activities. A comprehensive manual on various components (hardware, software, applications, MS office, internet, emailing, social media, cyber security, education and career opportunities in digital space) of digital media is provided to the facilitators. C3 combined this curriculum with digital life skill education, which helps build agency, develop better negotiation skill and enables the participating girls make better decisions for herself and her family.
Further, the curriculum has introduced issues of cyberbullying and internet safety, so that the girls are prepared to protect themselves.

Key Highlights :
  • 46% of Girls in our program are taking decisions on how to spend the money they earned
  • 39.6% girls can correctly report that keyboard is used to enter characters into a computer, against a baseline of 11.5%
  • 18% girls can correctly identify google.co.in as the address for a popular search engine, against 5.4% during the baseline
  • Knowledge that internet can be used to check exam results increased from 17.2% to 33%
  • Knowledge on e-cash increased significantly from baseline to end line. Whereas during baseline 95% girls were not aware of e-cash, by end line this had reduced to 77%
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Case story
Laxmi Kullu: A story of building self-reliance

Laxmi Kullu after completing class VIII in 2015, left her studies due to lack of interest and family issues. There are 7 members including herself, in her family—her mother, father, 3 sisters and 1 brother. In 2017 when the C3 team visited her village for the enrolment of girls for the project Akanksha, the digital literacy project, Laxmi immediately signed up for the course and she attended all her classes on regular basis at the Anganwadi center. She was always curious to know more and pushed herself to get the maximum learning from the program. Through this program, she started pursuing her studies again. And by the end of the program she had re-enrolled in school and had started attending her classes.