How Google’s Digital Education Is Transforming Rural Women’s Lives

Twenty-five-year-old Kamlesh Kumari, a resident of Sirmathura village in Dholpur district of Rajasthan, is engrossed in a tab, searching for child healthcare tips while her four-month-old daughter sleeps on her lap.

Educated till Class 8, Kamlesh craves knowledge. Mobile phone internet in the village has brought her a ray of hope. A confident Kamlesh not just surfs internet, but teaches other women in the village how to leverage the web.

Internet Saathi – an initiative by Google India under Helping Women Get Online campaign — has been transforming lives of women like Kamlesh in the villages of Dholpur.
Internet, which seemed a distant dream to them, is now a touch away.

“The usage of the internet among women in India is lower than most countries in the world. Only one-third of users are women.

This gender disparity was the big concern that we wanted to address,” said Sapna Chadha, marketing head of Google India.

While the Internet users are growing at 56 %,the growth rate of women Internet users is only 27 % in rural India.

 Internet Saathi aims to bridge the gender divide in technology that currently puts women in rural India at a bigger risk of getting marginalised in society.

After its launch in 2015, Internet Saathi has reached around 4,000 villages across five states – Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

More than 100,000 women have been trained so far.

 There are 1,900 trained women to teach them – their number is increasing by up to 500 a week.

Internet Saathi sends women out on bicycles, armed with a smartphone and a tablet, to let women in villages experience the net.