Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) is a Delhi-based nonprofit organization working towards empowering people to gain access to better healthcare, education, skills and livelihood opportunities through digital literacy and digital tools. The organization’s main focus is to make technology easily accessible to the masses, to empower women, youth, persons with disabilities and the elderly through providing functional digital literacy, media literacy, and digital up-skilling across agriculture, micro and nano-business, health, education, livelihood, and entrepreneurial skills. Over the last 20 years, the organization has been actively engaged in digitally empowering local communities through its 1000 Community Information Resource Centers. These centers are supported by a widespread network of 10,000 digital foot soldiers located across 24 states and 135 districts in rural, tribal, marginalized and unreached areas. DEF has directly impacted the lives of more than 30 million people including people from below the poverty line, women, artisans, youth, persons with disabilities, and the elderly.
Purpose
With the motto of ‘Inform, Communicate and Empower,’ Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) focuses its efforts on finding sustainable Information Communication Technology (ICT) solutions including digital and new media to address the digital divide in under-served and unreached regions and communities. Since our inception in 2002, our broad areas of engagement have also evolved. As an organization established in the early 2000s, much before the expansion of internet infrastructure and digital equipment, our initial focus was on connecting the unconnected regions in India through wireless hotspots and innovative and low-cost internet infrastructure. Over time, we have been focusing on bridging the digital gap in India not just in unconnected areas but in under-connected regions that are not able to meaningfully use internet and internet services. The third area of intervention is on the problems emerging out of hyperconnectivity in newly digitized communities where misinformation and disinformation are prevalent social issues.
