The Hindu : National : Microsoft grants $108,000 to M.S. Swaminathan Foundation

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Saturday, Feb 12, 2005

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Microsoft grants $108,000 to M.S. Swaminathan Foundation

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, FEB. 11. The Indian subsidiary of the information technology major, Microsoft Corporation, today announced a $108,000 grant each to M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation and Datamation Foundation Charitable Trust under its `Unlimited Potential Programme.'

The grant under the programme, which seeks to empower women and communities through the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in rural areas, will be disbursed over a one-year period.

A press release announcing the roll-out of the second round of funding under the programme, quoted Ravi Venkatesan, chairman, Microsoft Corporation India, saying that the mission was to leverage technology to create equal opportunities for individuals in both rural and urban areas.

"Going forward, we will be deepening the programme in India with more partnerships with non-government organisations and civil society groups and targeting more field interventions in training and capacity building of communities." The MSSRF chairman, M.S. Swaminathan, said programmes like Microsoft's `Unlimited Potential' were "exceedingly important" from the perspective of unleashing the latent potential of women and men in rural India by leveraging ICTs.

Using the grant the MSSRF, which was collaborating with Microsoft on a long-term project, would be setting up 33 Village Knowledge Centres (VKCs) in the first year and 100 more such centres over three years in Thanjavur, Dindigul, Pudukkottai, Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry.

The VKCs would build skills and capacities of the rural communities with a view to enhancing livelihood opportunities. A total of 1,500 village academicians and fellows would be trained to train fellow community members and manage the Community Technology and Learning Centres (CTLCs).

Chetan Sharma, founder, Datamation Foundation Charitable Trust, said in the release that with the grant the trust would set a pilot `ICT for development' project aimed at reaching out to the poor and semi-literate women of Kanpur-Lucknow corridor in Uttar Pradesh. The community in the areas comprises women engaged in traditional `chikankari' embroidery. In the project period, 3,000 women would be trained by upgrading the two CTLCs and adding six more to the network.

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