Between November and January, Saindapur village in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh has witnessed a massive drop in business for handloom weavers. Once flourishing with the clitter-clatter of handlooms, Saidanpur — which is home to 200 weaver families — today complains of acute lack of work. After a number of meetings with suppliers and weavers…
Yashoda Devi is 71 years old. A resident of Parsa village in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh, she lost her husband at the age of 40. Since then, she has had the sole responsibility of raising her eight children. Wages in Barabanki are low, and families are big. It’s almost the same story in every…
Preethi Herman Country Lead Change.org India In October 2015, Masooma Ranalvi wrote a blog about her experience of undergoing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Her blog described her horrific experience of being circumcised as a little girl without her consent or preparation. What she didn’t know then was that she had just initiated the crowdsourced movement…
A two-day workshop was conducted for the newly recruited batch of 10 SoochnaPreneurs (SPs) in Barpali block in Orissa on January 5-6, 2017. The aim of the workshop was to reinforce entrepreneurial skill sets and desired behavioural and attitudal changes in SPs for enhanced productivity at work. One of the key objectives of the workshop…
For wider adoption of digitally designed graphs by Ikat weavers of Barpali and Nuapatna in Odisha, consultation workshops were recently organised at DigiKala centres in both the regions. DigiKala is an initiative of Microsoft and DEF that aims to digitally enable the weavers in these two handloom clusters. The workshop was organised to address the…
The 5th edition of eNGO Challenge Awards will take place under the larger umbrella of Prayag 2017. This year, eNGO Challenge opened its nominations for all grassroots organisations, irrespective of their work domain and whether or not they use digital tools to reach out to grassroots communities. This year, the platform received 331 nominations from…
The world is standing at the crossroads. One way leads to inclusive globalisation and the other to exclusive localisation. While globalisation at the cost of local skills is certainly undesirable, sharing and engagement is the only way forward for any society and culture in the digital era that is the hallmark of inclusiveness. We cannot…
There is no limit to learning online; the Internet is full of information—all one needs is a thirst for knowledge
With the intention of providing a South Asian platform for dialogue on human rights online, DEF in association with The Friedrich Naumann Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF) had organised the Digital Citizen Summit on November 11, 2016, at the Hotel Royal Orchid in Bangalore. Organised at a time where the narrative surrounding online rights is…
Last month, DEF conducted a one-day training workshop for the use of ICTs, social media and secure online communications for grassroots-level human rights organisation in collaboration with Amnesty International India in Raigarh, Chattisgarh. Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) were trained in tools and tactics to use traditional and digital media for the purpose of activism. They…
