Recipient Institution:
University of Western Australia
Graduate School of Management

Project Leader:
Dr. V. S. Venkatesan
vvenkate@ecel.uwa.edu.au

URL:
http://www.gsm.uwa.edu.au

Amount and Duration: US$ 10,250 / 12 months

Abstract of Project
The project seeks to design and evaluate a web based women education / health information tool targeting rural women in Tamilnadu. Seethalakshmi Ramaswamy College (SRC) will serve as the information hub. The system will focus on:

• Reducing the school dropout rate of female students in rural schools through information technology (IT) based education tools.
• Health information dissemination to rural women.
• Using IT to train a core group of volunteer women students who, in turn, will disseminate the information through IT and non-IT channels.
• Develop and promote a web based information tool which is accessible to these students and other volunteer/ social service groups in the region.

The welfare of women is a major socioeconomic problem in India. Poverty, lack of knowledge and resources, social systems, religious beliefs and a variety of socioeconomic and political dimensions impact on women in developing countries and impede their ability to access health information. An important element is the lack of education. For example, despite a worldwide information blitz on AIDS, rural women are even now ignorant of this disease.

While the solution to this problem is more involved than what an IT based small project (like the proposed one) can solve, IT tools can play a significant role in distilling worldwide information and disseminating it to rural audience at a reasonable cost. Our research suggests that, in rural communities, a locally focused system is much more
useful than a global www system and a combination of IT with motivated individuals is more effective in combating social problems. In contrast to large international projects, the proposed project is a micro social experiment. Such a micro system with local community ownership could be a forerunner to similar ones in other parts of India.