With the ongoing pandemic, the entire world moved towards a digital age. Digital meetings, online education, online family gatherings gathered popularity. But what about the hundreds of students in rural areas who do not have access to digital devices?

ICECD's Holistic Socio-Economic Development Project started in the year 2017 funded by Amazon India as their CSR project. In the last five years, ICECD has worked in 12 villages of Daskroi and Bavla Talukas including: Bagodara, Shiyal, Gangad, Rupal, Kavetha, Raasam, Rajoda, Bavla, Miroli, Jetalpur, Vasai and Bavla, covering a population of 1,50,000 persons. Holistic Socio-Economic Development of a village includes touching all needs that a village has to perform at its optimum. ICECD's 35 year expertise in the field lead to recognising the needs of these villages in the areas of: Entrepreneurship, Skill development, Strengthening of Anganwadis, Preventive Health, Tree Plantation, Leadership Strengthening as well as Digital Literacy.

Considering the pandemic situation, these rural areas suffered primarily due to stoppage in education of primary schools as the kids in poor areas did not have access to internet or digital gadgets. It is during this time, with the financial support of Amazon India, ICECD today distributed 50 Tablets to the remote areas. Over 500 kids will now be able to access education when schools are online. Shri. Dr. Kuber Dindor, Minister of State For Higher & Technical Education and Legislative & Parliamentary Affair graced the event where 250+ rural teachers, principals and students were present. While speaking at the event he shared, "I am greatly impressed by the humanitarian initiatives done by team ICECD in the field of skill education and entrepreneurship. Also in the time of need you have given tablets to the most needy strata of society, this shall go a long way.

Not only this, looking as the need of digital education in rural schools, ICECD has conducted capacity building of teachers in 24 schools and trained them with the latest digital skills to navigate the world of online education. During the pandemic period, ICECD also gave 24/7 access to these teachers to trouble shoot their tech problems to help them continue their online education without fail. Not only that, ICECD has further helped these schools establish a digital education curriculum and classrooms to bring about the necessary change in these remote area schools.

"It is a great opportunity to be useful to the society and distributing tablets to the remote most schools is an opportunity for us to take education to the deepest corners of rural Gujarat", shared Ms. Hina Shah, Director, ICECD.

ICECD's interventions do not just impact the kids. ICECD's core focus area is entrepreneurship and training the youth in these areas to be micro business owners. During the last 5 years, ICECD has trained over 300 men and women to become entrepreneurs and have linked many to e-commerce websites in a way that rural production can be sold nationally on the internet.

Going towards a digital age is the next step for any village in the coming years. ICECD is helping villages cross these barriers, one village at a time.

HP Enterprise and Qualcomm collaborated to deliver Next Generation 5G Virtual Distributed Units (vDU)

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