Facebook Eyes Internet Literacy Among Women With ‘Digital Beti’

Facebook will be hoping leverage this digital literacy program to educate people on the internet and add users too.

Facebook is part of the India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2019 this week but the social networking giant has no plans of making any big announcement. Instead, we came across Facebook’s version of digital literacy program for women in India, modelled similar to Google’s ‘Internet Saathi’ initiative.

Digital literacy refers to educating a group of people about the internet, and use them to train other people across different parts of the country.

While the ‘Digital Beti’ initiative was announced earlier this year, Facebook has taken cue from Google’s playbook which might accrue positive dividends for the technology giant.

Facebook’s pitch with ‘Digital Beti’ caters to the apparent distinct digital divide on gender lines. It hopes to train a group of village-level entrepreneurs, who subsequently can help in training other people to use the internet for different use cases.

With around 30 percent internet penetration, India already has more than 241 million users on Facebook alone. However, there still remains a distinct digital divide on the gender lines. 

Facebook on Digital Beti

For this program, Facebook has partnered with the government's Common Service Centres (CSC) Academy which is part of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

With this, Facebook aims to train village-level entrepreneurs (VLE), enabling them to use the internet to help people find jobs, and educate them about online safety. 

Facebook on Digital Beti

Facebook’s initial effort is to train over 5,000 VLEs in states like Jammu and Kashmir, UP, Rajasthan, Telangana and Bihar among others. These VLE will then train 250,000 rural entrepreneurs from over 3,000 villages.

In addition to this, Facebook will be working on different curriculum which will be made available in over 12 local languages in the country, thereby expanding its reach with this program.

Compared to Google early-mover advantage in this domain, helping it reach over 2.6 lakh villages in the country, Facebook’s focus will be hoping to realign its image in India, where it is already battling in the courtroom owing to issues with encryption of its messaging platform, WhatsApp.