Thursday, December 18, 2008

NASSCOM Foundation to Host 3rd National Consultation

NASSCOM Foundation (NF), the CSR arm of NASSCOM, will be hosting its third National Consultation along with its NGO partners. With an over arching theme, ICT for rural Inclusion: Access, Empowerment, Employability, this three day National Consultation aims to discuss and deliberate on enabling rural inclusion, and take stock of the progress made by the various programmes to enhance access, empowerment and employment of the underserved in India. Experts from the industry, academia and grassroots organization will be attending the National Consultation.

Taking forward the theme of ICT for rural Inclusion: Access, Empowerment, Employability: there will be discussions on the role of Mobiles in Development. There will be deliberations on Mobile for Governance services, applications for development and some best in class case studies around some applications. Other sessions will be around a variety of topics which is around skills building for employment using ICT. Focus will be on connecting NGO’s to employability skills training, training for the differently abled, skills imparted for Rural BPO’s and Animation skills training youth and discussions around training for the retail sector.

Apart from these deliberations, there will be training programs for NGO partners on documentation. The objective is to build capacity of the grassroots managers to document their project experience and impacts. The National Consultation will also see participants from corporates who will be presenting their success stories around CSR and the impact that they made through their CSR activities.

Speaking on the occasion, Ms. Rufina Fernandes, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation, said, “National Consultation such as these are the best way to gauge if all the hard work and resources are channelised in the right direction. It’s a proven fact that intra-partner relation enhances capacities and capabilities of the NKN centers and helps the centers in becoming self-sustainable in the long run”.

NF is developing a web based application that can be used country wide by the NGO partners of the Nasscom Knowledge Network (NKN) Program. The Software will cover various activities at center so that various reports will be generated by the software. The NKN management system will support two roles: the NGO on the grassroot level who will enter data into the system and ADMIN of the NKN program who will generate reports and statistics dynamically. The NGO will feed in data regarding the centers they are managing which includes students enrolled for different content, their performance during the course and subsequent job status.

This application is believed to provide a NKN Resource section wherein NGOs can download the documents / policies, etc. NASSCOM Foundation will thus be able to get a consolidated view on which content in which centers are being used to impact social development and be able to focus better on the program resources.

About NASSCOM Foundation
NASSCOM Foundation (NF) is a trust registered under the Indian Trust Act 1882. It was registered in the year 2001. NF’s vision is to leverage information and communication technologies (ICT) to empower and transform the lives of the under-served. NASSCOM and its members are committed to social development through the application of ICT. NF today has the unique opportunity of leading the IT Industry towards changing the social development landscape of India. NF is the CSR arm of NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies), the internationally recognized trade body of the Indian IT industry. For more information on NF log on to: http://www.nasscomfoundation.org/

Source: http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/education/2008121717019.htm

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