Techies hack to support education for women

BENGALURU: A group of 25 city-based techies who took part in two-day hackathon Hack4Her, have come up with technology-based solutions to support education for

women

. These include providing access to online educational materials for girls, including a need-based helpline with information on their rights, building capacities of tutors in

Kishori Sanghas

and linking these groups to assist each other academically.

Organized by

Women Education Project

(WEP), a notfor-profit organization, and Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), a social hackathon, the event last week aimed at addressing poor literacy and high school dropouts among girls in the country.

Suraj Kumar Jana, founder of

Opencube Labs

and a Hack4Her participant, said: “The female literacy rate in India is 65.46%, according to the 2011 census, while the world average is 79.7%. The school dropout rate among girls is as high as 63.5%. This hackathon enabled us to use technology-based innovation to give every girlchild her right to education.”

Apart from coming up with a platform for online access to study material and a peer-support group of tutors for academic assistance, Hack4Her saw a range of technology-based solutions, including tangible platforms that could nurture skills of girls as well as speak of their capabilities, along with bringing in a change in mindset to provide better institutional infrastructure.

“We plan to create an online platform where girls can learn about subjects such as health, finance, civic and environmental science, among others. The programme would be such that users can log in from any part of the world,” Suraj said, adding: “We have come up with a web portal for peer-to-peer skill sharing among women. For example, if a girl has skills in computer programming and wants to learn south Indian cooking, she can learn it from her peers while sharing her knowledge with them.”