Newsletter of the NASSCOM Knowledge Network (NKN) 2.0 Issue 6 April - May 2013 Fasal—An Initiative to empower Indian Agriculture There are an estimated 270 million people engaged in farming in India. Most of the times, farmers are dependent on middle men in local mandis to sell their produce. They are often unaware of competitive rates or additional market places where they might be able to make greater profits. Very often, farmers have to deal with the uncer- tainties due to weather or diseases that they need to protect their to obtain a fair price for their produce. Fasal is an easy to use SMS based platform; which provides personalized, reliable and real time wholesale market prices to farmers free of cost. In addition to this, using sophisticated matching algorithms; Fasal connects farm- ers to available best buyers in the mandis included in the farmer’s area. This information enables farmers to make better business decisions, empowering them with information to negotiate a better livelihood. Farmers using Fasal, on an average make 14% more money on their produce. (IMRB Study 2012) A farmer signs-up to the service by calling Fasal and providing his profile information. There-after, when the farmer is looking to sell, he can give a simple missed call to 18002082081 and get real-time market price infor- mation or weather forecast etc back on SMS. Fasal uses rich profile information of its farmer users to deliver addi- tional content that farmers will value. Presently, Fasal service is available in three states in India – Gujarat, An- dhra Pradesh and Karnataka and over 1.4 million farmers have used Fasal across these states. Fasal is continuing to grow farmers into its network. Important step After successfully running the NKN centers for the last 8 years, NASSCOM Foundation is in the process of transforming NKN centers into Common Share Services Centers (CSC). Please contact to know more how your center can be the part of the process. Child Care cum NKN centre During May, a Child care cum NKN centre was launched in Mathurapahari, Suri block, Birbhum block, West Bengal. This centre is run by BiGUS and support- ed by BP (British Petroleum). Services at the centre include: Day shelter for children of the village. Adult literacy & skill development training for women Health education & life skills training for girls Pragatee Foundation Pragatee Foundation is set to launch a program for training Unskilled & disadvantaged women and providing link- ages to employment for empowerment. This project will be launched in 3 districts of Maharashtra and will be rep- licated later in entire state. Tailoring, Beauty care & SPA, computers, para medicals & accounting will be Skills set courses. They are open to individual candidate funding, for more details please write to [email protected] . Newsletter of the NASSCOM Knowledge Network (NKN) 2.0 Issue 8 October 2013 In this issue: 1. Best practices @ NKN Introducing NSDC skill training scheme UDAAN Foundation’s new initiative 2. Star partner — Restless Development 4. Request for proposal 5. Network Updates 6. More from NASSCOM Foundation UDAAN Shiksha Kendra— Literacy through com- munity radio Responding to a long standing demand from the local community to learn the English language, UDAAN Foundation (NKN partner in Uttrakhand) designed a programme that caters to different English language learners in the area, and is easily accessible to remote rural communities where infrastructure continues to be a challenge. The foundation decided to involve the local communi- ty radio, “Kumaon Vani” and titled their programme “English-Vinglish”. The programme has been success- fully running. With the help of multidisciplinary team they developed the curriculum. Since July 2013 they are implementing each and every aspect of the pro- gramme. Thanks to this initiative, a very large number of learn- ers are being reached. The phone-in comments and interviews confirm that radio broadcasts have a signif- icant impact on rural communities if tailored to the specific interests and culture of listeners.The pro- gramme has rapidly attracted a large audience and has reached an outstanding response. At a conserva- tive estimate, there are over 1000 daily listeners. For details write to —[email protected]National Skill Development Corporation’s Skil- ling initiative LAQSH, an NSDC partner has proposed to train and certify 10,000 youth across the country. With a vision to transform the lives of youth by providing them knowledge, skills and the winning attitude to access jobs and lead a quality life. The scheme covers job roles in Retail, Telecom, Secu- rity and Healthcare. The Training is meant for entry level job roles. Course duration is minimum 1 month and could extend to 3 months for some courses. This scheme aims to benefit 1 million youth by July 2014. In addition, this will also align training and cer- tification to the needs of the country. NKN Partners—Pondicherry Multipurpose Social Ser- vice Society (PMSSS) in Puducherry, Voluntary Associ- ation for Peoples Service (VAPS) in Tamilnadu, Forum for Integrated Development (FIDR) in Orissa and San- skriti Samavardhan Mandal (SSM) in Maharashtra have already availed the scheme. Few other NKN partners are also interested and will soon be joining the initia- tive. Veena Sethi with program team
Transcript
Newsletter of the
NASSCOM Knowledge Network
(NKN) 2.0
Issue 6 April - May 2013
This issue 1. Child care cum NKN centre 2. Fasal—An initiative to empower Indian Agri-
culture 3. Pragatee Foundation—new program launch 4. Microsoft Innovate for Good—a two day
event 5. Restless Development advert
Fasal—An Initiative to empower Indian Agriculture
There are an estimated 270 million people engaged in farming in India. Most of the times, farmers are dependent on middle men in local mandis to sell their produce. They are often unaware of competitive rates or additional market places where they might be able to make greater profits. Very often, farmers have to deal with the uncer-tainties due to weather or diseases that they need to protect their to obtain a fair price for their produce. Fasal is an easy to use SMS based platform; which provides personalized, reliable and real time wholesale market prices to farmers free of cost. In addition to this, using sophisticated matching algorithms; Fasal connects farm-ers to available best buyers in the mandis included in the farmer’s area. This information enables farmers to make better business decisions, empowering them with information to negotiate a better livelihood. Farmers using Fasal, on an average make 14% more money on their produce. (IMRB Study 2012)
A farmer signs-up to the service by calling Fasal and providing his profile information. There-after, when the farmer is looking to sell, he can give a simple missed call to 18002082081 and get real-time market price infor-mation or weather forecast etc back on SMS. Fasal uses rich profile information of its farmer users to deliver addi-tional content that farmers will value. Presently, Fasal service is available in three states in India – Gujarat, An-dhra Pradesh and Karnataka and over 1.4 million farmers have used Fasal across these states. Fasal is continuing to grow farmers into its network.
Important step After successfully running the NKN centers for the last 8 years, NASSCOM Foundation is in the process of transforming NKN centers into Common Share Services Centers (CSC). Please contact to know more how your center can be the part of the process.
Child Care cum NKN centre During May, a Child care cum NKN centre was launched in Mathurapahari, Suri block, Birbhum block, West Bengal. This centre is run by BiGUS and support-ed by BP (British Petroleum). Services at the centre include:
Day shelter for children of the village. Adult literacy & skill development training for
women Health education & life skills training for girls
Pragatee Foundation Pragatee Foundation is set to launch a program for training Unskilled & disadvantaged women and providing link-ages to employment for empowerment. This project will be launched in 3 districts of Maharashtra and will be rep-licated later in entire state. Tailoring, Beauty care & SPA, computers, para medicals & accounting will be Skills set courses. They are open to individual candidate funding, for more details please write to [email protected] .
Newsletter of the
NASSCOM Knowledge Network
(NKN) 2.0
Issue 8 October 2013
In this issue: 1. Best practices @ NKN Introducing NSDC skill training scheme UDAAN Foundation’s new initiative
2. Star partner — Restless Development 4. Request for proposal 5. Network Updates 6. More from NASSCOM Foundation
UDAAN Shiksha Kendra— Literacy through com-munity radio
Responding to a long standing demand from the local community to learn the English language, UDAAN Foundation (NKN partner in Uttrakhand) designed a programme that caters to different English language learners in the area, and is easily accessible to remote rural communities where infrastructure continues to
be a challenge.
The foundation decided to involve the local communi-ty radio, “Kumaon Vani” and titled their programme “English-Vinglish”. The programme has been success-fully running. With the help of multidisciplinary team they developed the curriculum. Since July 2013 they are implementing each and every aspect of the pro-
gramme.
Thanks to this initiative, a very large number of learn-ers are being reached. The phone-in comments and interviews confirm that radio broadcasts have a signif-icant impact on rural communities if tailored to the specific interests and culture of listeners.The pro-gramme has rapidly attracted a large audience and has reached an outstanding response. At a conserva-tive estimate, there are over 1000 daily listeners. For
National Skill Development Corporation’s Skil-ling initiative LAQSH, an NSDC partner has proposed to train and certify 10,000 youth across the country. With a vision to transform the lives of youth by providing them knowledge, skills and the winning attitude to access jobs and lead a quality life. The scheme covers job roles in Retail, Telecom, Secu-rity and Healthcare. The Training is meant for entry level job roles. Course duration is minimum 1 month and could extend to 3 months for some courses. This scheme aims to benefit 1 million youth by July 2014. In addition, this will also align training and cer-
tification to the needs of the country.
NKN Partners—Pondicherry Multipurpose Social Ser-vice Society (PMSSS) in Puducherry, Voluntary Associ-ation for Peoples Service (VAPS) in Tamilnadu, Forum for Integrated Development (FIDR) in Orissa and San-skriti Samavardhan Mandal (SSM) in Maharashtra have already availed the scheme. Few other NKN partners are also interested and will soon be joining the initia-tive.
Restless Development India (registered as SPW India Project Trust) working in India since 1985 with young people in the areas of Young People and Health, Livelihoods and Employment & Civic Participation and Gov-ernance. Restless Development has joined hands with NASSCOM Foundation under the NKN program. This partnership will provide technical support to run & manage 10 Youth Resource Centres in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha. They are committed to—mobilizing young people as an effective human resource in development efforts. Empowering & including young people living in rural communities to directly influence government strategies to include a focus on young people. These centres will offer NKN services along with personality development courses for rural youth. The cen-tres will also focus on providing employment solutions to the bright students. Restless Development’s mission is to place young people at the forefront of change and development. In In-dia, Restless Development reaches out to around 100000 young people in a year. To achieve their mission they deploy 5 approaches. 1) Direct Delivery 2) Generation of Leadership 3) Building a Strong Youth Sector 4) Shaping Policy and Practice 5) Sharing and Learning. For more details please write to—[email protected]
Request for proposal–
1. The Asia Foundation: Improving Lives, Expanding Opportunities : http://www.fundsforngos.org/article-contributions/asia-foundation-improving-lives-expanding-opportunities/
2. The Top Ten US Charitable Foundations call for nominations for financial support : http://www.fundsforngos.org/all-listings/worlds-top-ten-wealthiest-charitable-foundations/
Felicitation Ceremony @ MBT Moser Baer Trust—an NKN partner organized a felicitation ceremony to distribute certificates to 70 students who participated in session June-Sep, 2013 under Digital Literacy Program (DLP). The event saw representatives from District Administration & NASSCOM Foundation. It was an interactive event where students came forward to share their experiences; While all the stakeholders congratulated MBT for its great work.
On 25—26 of April, 2013 Microsoft India along with Quest Alliance organized ‘Microsoft Innovate for Good’ under their Microsoft Youth Spark program, which is a global community enabling youth to collaborate, inspire and support each other while using technology to make a difference in their communities. Innovate for Good brings
together youth in a global on-line community to provide support for their ideas.
Youth attendees participated in on-site trainings, received mentoring tips on how to work together through peer collaboration to ultimately develop a stronger platform to launch their ideas. It was a great, successful & in-formative event. Five students each from each NKN—MBT (Moser Baer Trust) center attended the event. There
was much enthusiasm and positive feedback from all who attended the event.
Restless Development seeks agents4change Restless Development is a youth-led development agency. Their mission is to place young people at the fore-front of change and development. Their strength comes from being led by people and young professionals, from the boardroom right through to the field. They are on the lookout for young professionals passionate to bringing about a positive change. Currently, they are looking for communications professionals willing to lend their skills and help them in in-
creasing their outreach. For details, please write to [email protected]
Wish to learn software programming in a interactive way — log on to- http://www.code.org/
Contact Us | Delhi Office NASSCOM Foundation, 104, Delhi Blue Apartments, Safdarjung Enclave, Near Safdarjung Hospital, Ring Road, New Delhi – 110029 India Phone : +91 11 64782655/56/57/58/59/60/61 Email: [email protected], Website: www.nasscomfoundation.org
Network updates We will be soon launching the NKN portal, that will
provide free access to the content developed by NKN knowledge partners. To get access, All you need to do is, send a request over email. We will give you a unique identification for login. Once you login, any content can be downloaded free of charge. The portal will be hosted on our website under NKN program section. We welcome your ide-as and suggestions.
In October, NASSCOM Foundation attended the pro-
gram review meeting conducted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation under Global Libraries Development initiative. It was a 3 day seminar where the different program partners shared their respective program updates. NASSCOM Foundation completed the 1st phase by setting up a computer lab and community mapping in Ghaziabad district, Uttar Pradesh.
Vishwa Yuva Kendra (VYK) from New Delhi and the
Seven Sisters Development Assistance (SeSTA) from Assam have recently joined the NASSCOM Knowledge Network. This will be the first time when NKN centres will open in North East India. Meanwhile, the VYK will work with District Admin-istration to run & manage NKN centre in a local community school. whereas SeSTA will cater the needs of the youth of rural Assam through the NKN centre.
Get featured in our newsletter! This is YOUR newsletter, YOUR space to talk about your achievements and updates for the community! We are starting to highlight one partner every issue. Send us articles / news/ updates and your profiles. We will pub-lish them here for everyone to see. Email [email protected] for further queries, if any.
Contact Us | Delhi Office
104, Delhi Blue Apartments, Safdarjung Enclave, Near Safdarjung Hospital, Ring Road, New Delhi – 110029 India. Phone : +91 11 64782655/56/57/58/59/60/61 Website: www.nasscomfoundation.org
More from NASSCOM Foundation!
NASSCOM Social Innovation Honours (NSIH 2014) celebrate social innovations across private, government, and civil society in India. Many entrepreneurs, corporate bodies, Government departments, and individuals are using ICT to create solutions that address gaps in social de-velopment. NSIH invites them to celebrate and
collaborate at this platform.
For its innovative use of information and com-munications technology (ICT) to solve one of the most pressing social ills in India, Don Bosco was awarded a certificate of appreciation at
the NSIH 2013 in the NGO category.
Entries for the 6th edition, NSIH 2014, are now open and the winners will be honored at the NASSCOM India Leadership Forum early next
year.
If your organization is using Information and Communications Technology to create social impact, this is the forum for you! Apply for NSIH 2014 and use the opportunity to be part of the growing community who are thinking un-
reasonably to bring change!
For more information please visit www.nsih.net. Feel free to call for any queries a t 0 2 2 - 2 8 3 2 8 5 1 8 o r e m a i l u s at [email protected].
