Facebook ties up with govt CSC programme to train rural women entrepreneurs

Initiative will cover 250,000 entrepreneurs in 3,000 villages also seeks to educate them about privacy and security as first-time users

Facebook has tied up with the government’s Common Service Centre Academy to provide digital marketing education to village entrepreneurs and teach first-time online users about privacy and security. 

CSC Academy and Facebook have jointly designed and developed a digital curriculum, and provide digital training to 250,000 rural entrepreneurs in more than 3,000 villages. 

Facebook India Managing Director Ajit Mohan told Business Standard that the idea is to not just bring people online but also help them leverage the platform to grow their businesses. 

"In many ways what we're doing with this partnership is bringing best of Facebook's toolkits that are available to large corporations and making it available to village level entrepreneurs so they can...start creating economic opportunities for themselves and their communities. There's that framework of digital marketing that we are going to put as part of curriculum as part of the toolkit," he said. 

As part of this initiative, Facebook and CSC will provide training to 5,000 women VLEs in the ten States of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telangana, Bihar, Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. The training material has been provided in 14 languages. 

These women VLEs, as master trainers, will train rural entrepreneurs, to bring them online to enhance their business and gain market access. 

"With CSC there is a history of almost a public information distribution system which is already under way, which is continuining to scale. The model already leverages individual entrepreneurs to enable access to a broader set of public services in the communities that they live in," said Mohan.

HDFC and CSC also launched a credit card for small and medium enterprises, similar to Kisan Credit card. HDFC will also enable 100,000 CSCs in providing banking and related services across the country. 

The CSC is a part of of the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), approved by the government in May 2006, as part of its commitment in the National Common Minimum Programme to introduce e-governance on a massive scale.

CSCs offer Internet-enabled e-governance services in rural areas, including application forms, certificates, and utility payments such as electricity, telephone and water bills.

Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad said Tuesday that CSCs have completed 100 million Pradhan Mantri Fasal Beema Yojana registrations, 269,000 registrations in Ayushman Bharat, 1.08 million Wi-Fi subscribers. 

VLEs are entrusted with maintenance of 125,000 Bharat Net at Panchayat level and establishment of 100,000 digital villages across the country.