Rajasthan Churu district launches 'Computer Sakhi' to educate rural women

Rajasthan's Charu district administration has launched 'Computer Sakhi' with the aim of empowering rural women.

Rajasthan's Churu district has launched 'Computer Sakhi' with the aim of training about 70,000 people for basic programmes and the internet and empowering rural women. The district administration has written to the state government to provide RS-CIT (Rajasthan State Certificate course in Information Technology) on priority so that the trained women could land jobs at the gram panchayat level.

Around 6,500 women have already availed the training at government school laboratories and another batch is about to start next week.

"We have 70,000 women involved with self-help groups. We aim to make them digital and financially literate so that they can play a positive role in society. We are using government school computer labs. We are utilising the existing infrastructure which is not incurring any additional cost," said Churu District Collector Siddharth Sihag, as reported by PTI.

He added that there are 532 schools in the Churu district and almost all of them have computer labs and teachers.

"By the end of this year, we will have computer labs in all schools. Soon, they will also have internet connectivity," he said.

Mr. Sihag said that the proposal regarding giving priority to the rural women associated with SHGs in RSCIT for proper certification has been sent to the state government. He said that in-principle approval had been granted. The pilot run for the programe was started in April with 1,000 women.

"My son studies in an English medium school and I did not know much about computers. This training has helped me learn the basics. I want to learn more and get a proper certification to land a job at the village level. A certification and guidance will be of great help," Daulat Kanwar (30), a resident of Bidsadar in Churu district, said.