Dear GKD members, I thought you might find this article re. the use of ICT to help women inmates in India of interest.
Best regards, P Rajendran NIIT *************************************************************** For Tihar's women inmates, illiteracy is no hurdle for learning computers Indian Express, March 8, 2002 New Delhi: The women in Tihar will get to learn the nitty-grittys of computers for a week. However, the only problem is that many women inmates are illiterate. Launched by NIIT, this programme is a modified version of Swift Jyoti which was launched for men lodged in Tihar last December. NIIT's North India operations head Ajay Lal said: "Twenty women inmates will be trained for a week on everything from the Internet, E-mails, home budgeting and even planning their children's future. We have also created caches of certain women-oriented sites since they will not be allowed to use the Internet inside Tihar. The caches will give them an idea of the Internet." In the tiny room, full of computers provided by NIIT, 10 inmates try their hand at the machines. While most of them check out the various programmes, two use it to draw and paint, while another plays Solitaire. Most of them seem comfortable with the computer, but one of the inmates confesses: "I am not used to this. But I guess learning this will help me later on, after I am released." With this venture, NIIT hopes to replicate the success of an identical programme conducted in the men jails. Superintendent of jail number 3, O.P. Mishra said: "The Swift Jyoti training programme in the men's jails helped the inmates a lot, especially with the legal work. They have formatted various forms of appeals and applications for their appeals. In fact, many of them have written their own programmes." The problem however, jail officials say, arises in the women's jail. "Most of the women who come to Tihar for even a week are taught to write and read their names in Hindi and English. The level of literacy is poor here and many of them are only Class VIII pass," DIG (Prisons) S.S. Sidhu said. "In fact, the literacy divide in jail 6A (the women's jail) is huge. Either we get inmates who are illiterate or those who have completed only primary or secondary levels of education. And then there are those who are professionals from well-off families who are in Tihar for primarily dowry-related cases," a jail official added. Echoing the official, an inmate said: "I am a professional and have worked on the computers for a long time. In fact, I would conduct most of my business with overseas clients through the Internet." She added: "I am excited about this course as after we are through with it, we will be able to teach other women in this jail. But most of them here have no idea what a computer is or what it can do. Many of them today, don't even know that we have computers in this jail." NIIT however believes that it can surmount this problem. "The course instructors will be teaching primarily in Hindi, so learning computers will not be a problem," Lal said. He further added that at a later date, NIIT does plan to introduce regional language programmes so that the computer literacy movement can have a larger reach. ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, an NGO that is a GKP member*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
