In India, the SITA project has completed a project, which has provided basic computer skills to more than 450 women with disadvantaged backgrounds. The programme provides needy women skills free of cost. A highly motivated and dedicated group of trainers have supervised their training and helped them to obtain the best possible skills. This project has empowered the women with tools necessary to achieve steady income jobs and empowerment. SITA's success is the triumph of the women in fulfilling their own capacities and in achieving skills, which have made them qualified workers.

Ideologically, the founding mother of SITA is Dr Kamalni Sane, an Indian scientist who became aware of the economical and social possibilities for participation of women in the technology industry. However, only a minority of women had access to computers and she believed that new ways should be explored to include more women in the information revolution. After her premature death in 1993, her husband and professional colleague Prof. Krishna V Sane decided to continue to develop her work. In July 1999 he launched project SITA with the funding of Information Development (InfoDev), a donor programme under the World Bank.

SITA started to train a core group of trainers and developed a resource package for the programme based on three main objectives:

• To organise training programmes in emerging technologies based on local resources and local initiatives.
• To orient such training programs to meet the requirements of different employers, to meet the needs of self-employment and to enable the disadvantaged sector to earn a livelihood with dignity and confidence.
• To produce pedagogically sound teaching material at affordable prices so that the teaching material becomes more creative, enjoyable, and relevant. Research on these questions has been integrated in the teaching and practices of SITA.

The programme management chose to equip the training rooms with the easy operate-able 286, 386 and Pentium based computers. Each computer had MS Office, Tally, Corel and PageMaker software installed. Training was offered for free under the condition that the beneficiaries would volunteer to offer part time services as assistant to the trainer after they had completed the course. A majority of trainees have achieved commendable proficiency in basic computer skills, which confirms the expectation that the not-so-fortunate have the capacity to become a part of the mainstream work-force if they are given appropriate training.

The beneficiaries graduated in December 2000 and the evaluation acknowledged that the beneficiaries had acquired useful skills through the training and had proven their capacities as competent workers. The recognition of SITA and the beneficiaries' success has been further clearly acknowledged by international awards and invitations to share their experiences at global conferences ad workshops.

One disappointing experience has been the low percent of successful job applicants. This has shown that though basic training was provided, it was not sufficient to make a salary in the demanding industry. Consequentially it led to an increase in the number of "drop-outs", and the inability of the project to break the vicious societal circle. In view of the challenge, SITA embraced reality and decided on a phasing out stage of the project. In addition, a fund has also been established to ensure that the training would continue as far as it could after the end of the project stage.

The primary lesson learnt is that beneficiaries must be able to earn a minimum wage with their newly acquired skills for the project to be sustainable. SITA has approached this problem by giving small groups of SITA trainees' contracts to do simple work as data entry, making letterheads, making visiting cards etc. SITA has two objectives with this approach: One is to provide the trainees with practical experience; the other is to share experiences from an experienced worker to a less experienced worker. This initiative has now fostered a proposal to establish a network independent from SITA.

Moving forward, Director of SITA, Krishna V Sane established a cooperative called MitraMandal. Krishna proposed a solution to network the trainees and the trainers by establishing a Training Wing (Talim) and a Job Wing (Prayas). Talim will continue the education as according to the strategy developed under SITA, whereas Prayas will introduce a "learn now, pay later" scheme where the needy women can pay for their training fees in small instalments.

The proposed coop model is an attempt to leverage on human networking in order to fully exploits the potential of ICT, which owes its power to the networking concept. They could conduct ICT based empowerment projects for the more disadvantaged people with the help of governments and non-governmental institutions.

The SITA project hopes that this would only be the start of a spill over effect where the newly empowered women would be able to assist other women, disabled people etc. Director of SITA, Krishna V Sane says, that MitraMandal will start to operate when the sufficient funding is found.

Additional information:
http://www.iicd.org/stories/
http://www.infodev.org
Project SITA, Director Krishna V Sane
2259, Hudson Line, Kingsway Camp, 110009 Delhi, India
Telephone: + 91 11 713 7937, Email: sitah@bol.net.in

QUOTES

The basic idea also considers gender empowerment as a means to tackle the broader questions of empowerment of the disadvantaged since women are better suited for "caring and sharing". (As a male, I learnt this simple truth quite late in my life but better late than never).
Prof. Krishna V Sane
Founder, SITA

Project SITA is a ray of hope for girls like us who can not afford the cost of attending computer courses but have the capability & desire to learn computer skills to earn a livelihood.
Archana, Anjali, Monika, Sushma, Itishree & Purnima

Coming from an orthodox Muslim family, SITA made me self reliant and now I can even think of realizing the dream of establishing a computer training center for women.
Yasmeen

After my father met with an accident, our family of seven is without a regular income. The computer training received by me through SITA has, however, given some hope for the future.
Gulshan