The valley in the Eastern Ghats inhabited by different tribes, comprising 14 Panchayats, ‘Araku’ mandal is one of the least polluted and less commercialized tourist destination in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh, which is inhabited by tribal people with rich tradition and number of artifacts, but totally disconnected from the outer world. Most people are Telugu speaking and engaged with agriculture and daily wages labour.Government had started a project to digitize the people through technology but due to lack of fund, this project has been closed. But recently through CIRC, Digital Empowerment Foundation has initiated its new activity to provide a holistic, community- empowered approach by connecting the tribal communities to the technology and internet.

To provide digital literacy CIRC has started four hour daily bases class in which two batches of 8 am to 10 am are held in morning for women and in evening two batches of 4 pm to 6 pm are conducted for men. Classes were started with 10 women in morning batch and 10 men in evening initially. Currently, total 40 members have been enrolled including 25 women and 15 men with majority of people between age 18 to 25 years. Centre is facilitated with Laptops and other ICT tools so that villagers can approach digitally to get sufficient information. Many services like scanning, printing, online ticket booking, etc. are now accessible to villagers without going away from their village.

Many people have started their own work at home like data entry, documentation after completing course and created long-lasting opportunity for their livelihood. Community has shown support and admirable attitude towards CIRC due to which centre is able to approach as many people as possible to fulfil its aim by empowering them through digital literacy.

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