Ahmedabad: In a bid to take digital literacy and knowledge of entrepreneurship to rural communities, the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), Bhat, Gandhinagar, has begun the ‘World on Wheels’ project.

Currently to be launched with five buses, each of them covering one state among Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh, the classes in buses will be on Union government projects like ‘Digital India’, ‘Start Up India, Stand Up India,’ and others. The main focus of the project is to teach entrepreneurship to those living in rural areas.

Dr Sunil Shukla, director of EDII, confirmed the development and said that the mobile classes will be launched within two weeks to impart knowledge on entrepreneurship, financial literacy and other issues according to various initiatives of the government.

Shukla said that the buses will be stationed at villages according to the convenience of villagers and their needs. “The buses will be there at evenings, so that women can also participate in large numbers,” he stressed.

“EDII’s target is to empower underprivileged groups to join the mainstream through familiarity with information technology. In this way, they will be better aware of various schemes and programmes of the governments, and they would also be better informed about their rights,” he said.

Each bus under the project is expected to impact 3,500 persons annually and will target school students, youth and women. Apart from digital literacy, the mobile classes in buses will also focus on disseminating literacy on water, sanitation and hygiene, innovations in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, health and nutrition issues of women and children etc.

Each IT-enabled bus will have 20 seats and will be powered by green energy. Numerous software suites and cloud integration will support the computers on board. To create the expected impact, each bus will reach 17,000 individuals living in remote regions every year. Each bus will tour at least 20 schools in rural areas.

The buses will be enabled with services to support digital literacy training, empowering of common service centres, e-Education for school and college students, tele-consultancy and videoconferencing for relevant groups, financial inclusion through bank linkages, entrepreneurship training for youths and etc.

Source: Times of India