Kollam: Students to make village e-literate
As many as 50 persons from the group will be selected as the target group leaders to lead the campaign.
Kollam: The students of Mar Baselious college at Anchal are on a mission to make an entire village e-literate. They will implement the programme in two wards in their panchayat as a pilot project through which digital literacy will be given to the entire people in association with the Kerala state council for science technology and environment (KSCSTE).
The MCA students will identify various target groups in wards 10 and 12, including colleges, schools, parishes, autorickshaw drivers Kudumbasree workers and merchant associations and make them competent in e-banking, e-governance and e-learning.
“We wanted to make use of the technical awareness of the students in the areas as part of their social responsibility. The digital literacy campaign project was submitted before the KSCSTE which agreed to fund it. The students conducted surveys on the use of smart phones and e-services in the area and found that most people did not know how to make use of these services,” Munnoo Maria Charls, programme coordinator and the brain behind the project, told DC.
The survey held in the second week of December found that the people depend mainly on Akshaya centres for e-governance services which could be done using smart phones once they are e-literate.
As a preliminary step of the year-long programme, a representative target audience of 100 people from the two selected wards will attend a meeting led by experts from Kerala state IT Mission and software experts of nationalised banks who have assured to cooperate with the venture.
As many as 50 persons from the group will be selected as the target group leaders to lead the campaign.
Training programmes led by IT experts will be conducted at the local level with the help of local coordinators.
A target audience of 100 people is expected to participate in each of the training programme. Follow-up sessions will be arranged with these groups after six months to ensure sustained digital literacy levels among the people as per the plan.