NEW DELHI (India CSR): The capital took a step ahead in its digital literacy journey as children from a vulnerable neighbourhood in North-West Delhi eagerly climbed the steps to a blue bus equipped with desktops and a projector screen, marking the inauguration of SOS Children’s Villages India’s second mobile digital learning centre (MDLC) in New Delhi, in partnership with Informa Exhibitions India Pvt Ltd., part of Informa Markets in India, the country’s leading B2B events organiser.
The mobile digital learning initiative currently spans three cities across the country: Delhi, Pune, and Raipur with direct impact on over 800 lives. Among these 804 beneficiaries, 152 are children. With the inauguration of the new mobile digital learning centre, Delhi alone is looking at a target of more than 800 additional beneficiaries for the year to come. The initiative aims to bring free digital skills, job-ready training, and confidence in digital learning to the youth and women hailing from marginal sections of the society.
Sumanta Kar, CEO, SOS Children’s Villages India says, “Digital inclusion is a necessity for education, employability, and social mobility. Yet, for many children and young people living in underserved communities, access to technology and digital learning remains out of reach. Through our Mobile Digital Learning Centres, we are taking technology directly to their neighbourhoods, ensuring that learning is not limited by geography or economic circumstances. The inauguration of our second mobile digital learning centre in Delhi marks another important step towards equipping children, youth, and women with the skills and confidence they need to participate meaningfully in an increasingly digital world. When learning travels to a child’s own neighbourhood, distance, cost, and worry stop standing in the way. Every child deserves that chance.”
Yogesh Mudras, Managing Director, Informa Markets in India says, “At Informa Markets in India, our CSR initiatives are guided by a simple belief: every child deserves the opportunity to learn, grow, and succeed. Education remains a key focus area for us because it has the power to transform lives and create lasting social impact. Our continued partnership with SOS Children’s Villages of India is helping expand access to digital learning and future-ready skills for children from vulnerable communities. We are proud to support the Mobile Digital Learning Centre and contribute to building a more inclusive future, one where every child, as an architect of the future, can unlock their potential and participate confidently in the opportunities of tomorrow.”
The capital city is home to 60,000 street children with most of them residing in North and Northwest Delhi, making the area the leading choice of location for the second DLC, as the area comprises of three lakh slum households across 675 clusters. 45% of government school students residing in the area has no access to smartphones or a stable internet connection. A whopping 77% of the youth in Delhi’s Northwest had no prior exposure to digital literacy.
The MDLC offers its beneficiaries five main pillars of skills – digital literacy, cyber safety, financial literacy, life skills, and certified assessments. Within its first year, the MDLC successfully paved the way for five of its beneficiaries to get job placements and eight children got re-enrolled at school. It also secured 28 links to scholarships and schemes, and 32 linkages to higher studies.
The Mobile Digital Learning Centre is a subset of the larger national network of digital change run by SOS Children’s Villages India across seven states and eight cities. Through this network, the NGO runs a spectrum of vocational training and digital learning centres through three programme modes. The mobile digital learning centre consists of customised buses that travel to urban slums and remote communities, the standalone vocational training centres (VTCs) are fixed centres for intensive vocational and digital skill training for beneficiaries aged between 18-27, and the afterschool VTCs are school-based DLCs for ages 14-17.
Through these vocational training models each beneficiary is equipped with academic progress, self-learning, digital employability skills, access to government services and schemes, financial inclusion, cyber-safety awareness, online learning habits, and a shot of social mobility. With 2610 young people participating annually, this model is proving to be a success, and it aims to set course on an expansive journey in its bid to eradicate digital illiteracy in India.
(India CSR)
