INFOLADIES IN BANGLADESH

ByAhammed JunaidNagarjuna KandulaAshok KondruUniversity of Hyderabad, India

What is Info lady project ?

Info lady or Tattahkalyani is an innovative programme developed by D.Net since April 2010. It is an ongoing project.

D. Net is a social enterprise established in January 2001 to promote access to information and knowledge for all citizens through interactive media in achieving constitutional, national and international developmental objectives.

An info lady bicycles to the door step of rural poor to provide various information and communication technology (ICT) based services.

Mainly the targets groups of this project are rural people.

Info ladies mainly targets students, women, farmers etc. They provide some service as free and some for fee.

An info lady usually carry a net book computer with web cam, digital camera and mobile phones with internet connectivity.sometimes they also carry health related equipment like a scale, blood sugar testing kit etc based on the need.

D.Net, usually selects under graduates as an info lady. D.Net trains them for three months to

use a computer, internet, printer and web camera.

It also arranges bank loans for the women to buy bicycle and equipment including computer, printer and camera.

About 60 info ladies are working in 19 of Bangladesh’s 60 districts.

Key figure The concept borrowed from Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Muhmmad Yunas who introduced “mobile ladies” for rural Bangladesh in 2004

As the result of this hugely successful experiment, now more than 92 million people in Bangladesh have cell phone access.

Major Partners and funding

D.Net, an ICT based NGO in Bangladesh and various community based organizations supervise the project.

The project is mainly supported by Manusher Jonno foundation (MJF).

Bangladesh central Bank agreed to offer interest free loans to infoladies.

1. Health services

2. Educational services

3.Communication based services

4. Services in agricultural sector

Services offered by Infoladies

Health services

The info ladies are trained to conduct blood pressure tests, urine tests, and to check hemoglobin counts.

They regularly check pregnant women’s health.

They use phones and internet, to immediately seek expert advice and put patient in touch with doctors for referral and fixing appointment.

They also help to existing rural health authorities to issue health cards, recording various health data, such as blood pressure measurement, diabetic levels of patients etc.

Educational services Info ladies conduct mock exams for public examination candidates and students.

They help students and teachers to use various academic resources through ICT.

They conduct classes for girls, aged between 12 and 17, on menstruation and reproductive health using ICT.

They regularly browse education related matters and save necessary pages to their laptop and share them with the students.

Communication based services

Info ladies use digital contents in local language Bangla, text picture, audio and multimedia form, to demonstrate solutions to livelihood problems.

D. Net and its subsidiary multimedia content and communications limited produce digital contents. Info ladies disseminate this content.

They help villagers to watch videos and animated features for a small fee. They help many rural people to get in touch with their kith and kin who work in abroad via video, communication enabled by Skype.

They give access to many necessary services including facility to apply visa via online, download various government forms, check public examination results, searching and applying for jobs and courses via online

They use digital camera and photo printer to provide photography services to rural community.

Info-ladies charge a nominal cost for many of these services.

Services in agricultural sector

Info ladies provide guidance to farmers about managing insect problems to protect crops, how to use fertilizers and various ways to increase yields etc.

Villagers can access livelihood information and knowledge.

Info-ladies give training in non-farm related livelihood opportunities such as soap and candle making, sewing, block-boutique, food processing etc. They also help to marketing of these products. It play a greater role to solve under employment in farming sector.

Relevance of the context (Bangladesh) The socio- cultural and economic realities in the Bangladesh, as a backward nation generally and its villages particularly, underscores the relevance of this project in its context.

We can see three forms of illiteracy in the context of Bangladesh. Firstly, formal literacy because of the social reasons, secondly illiteracy about information because of the political reasons, thirdly technological illiteracy because of the ignorance about information and communication technology based services.

Nearly 88.7% of girls get married by 18 years of age and 61.5% of total girl population marry by 15. Nearly 61% of births attended by unskilled personnel.

Mere five million of 152 million people in Bangladesh have internet access.

Impact of Info lady project

Two first person experiences

Info Lady Sathi Akhtar, who works in Begum's and Dipa's villages, said she makes more at the job than she would as a school teacher. She said that after making payments on her 120,000 taka ($1,480) loan and covering other costs, she takes home an average of 10,000 takas ($123) a month.

“One of my jackfruit trees was diseased and dying. The Info Lady helped me contact an expert at the help desk in Dhaka who recommended medicines for the tree. My tree is healing now. The service is worth the small price, as I would have lost income from the tree not bearing fruits.”

Mohammed Joynal Abedin, ( Farmer)

Impact of Info lady project

The project currently offers ICT enabled self-employment opportunity for about 60 educated rural women. An estimated 160, 196 women have received livelihood information and ancillary services from info ladies.

These info ladies have been the reason for improving income levels of 13,631 beneficiaries and saved cost of livelihood for 43,276 families

Their support and advise to people on loss or damage of poverty, life issues, advise on various rights have benefited 2832 rural people.

Recognition

The Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) award.

Association for Progressive Communications Women's Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP) award.

Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) award.

Microsoft Corporation and the Department for International Development (DfID) award.

Features about info ladies published in international media like NYT, BBC, AL-JAZEERA,TIME MAGAZINE.

Challenges In Bangladesh, social, cultural contexts often exacerbate rural isolation. It often leads to non-participation of marginalized communities. Like the residents of other remote villages around the world, the people of rural Bangladesh lacked many modern conveniences, including telephones, electricity and Internet connections.

Initially, the project targeted to train 16000 women as info ladies by 2016. The challenges of info lady project is clear from its failure to meet its proportionate target by 2013. Primary challenge of the project lies in various hindrances to develop the network of info ladies.Economic challenge : the huge cost required for an info lady prevents D.Net from enhance the number of the info ladies.

Psychological challenge: the risk taking factor as an entrepreneur prevents a rural women from to become an info lady.

Social challenge: the social restrictions and responsibilities prevents women from traditional society to become an info lady.

Conclusion

There are two stages of empowerment taking place in info lady project. Firstly, the project empower info ladies economically and socially. Secondly, the project use info ladies as a mean to empower rural society.

A dominant paradigm based, top down nature ICT service or project is next to impossible in rural Bangladesh because of the social, psychological and trust barriers. The participatory nature and clear awareness about ground realities helped info ladies to overcome these possible challenges.

The “insider or I am one of you” feeling created by info ladies helped them to overcome challenges because of the three types of illiteracy - formal illiteracy, illiteracy about information and technological illiteracy, prevail in rural Bangladesh.

The participatory nature make it a cost effective project

The constant support from beneficiaries because they get necessary service at low cost without having to travel and waste a day this support played a major role in the success of this project.

Reference

www.ndi.org/bangladesh-info-ladiesnews.yahoo.com/.../biking-info-ladies-bring-in... - United Stateswww.scotsman.com › The Scotsman › International.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226809/Info-Ladies-bringing-internet-bike-remote-villages-Bangladesh.html.

http://www.ndi.org/bangladesh-info-ladies

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