| COVID-19 Digital Emergency Relief Program - 01/04/2020 |
| Digital Empowerment Foundation |
| Technical Community and Civil Society | Asia & Pacific | India |
| The COVID -19 pandemic has affected social, economic, institutional and governance settings worldwide unimaginably and in immeasurable way and has thrown wide open unforeseen and unimaginable challenges for societies, communities, countries, and their government and with reverse migration of workers from cities, this has added to the challenge. They have been denied access to several critical rightful entitlements as citizens- losing access to basic welfare entitlements such as subsidized food (PDS), lack of a verifiable proof of identity is also barring them from accessing basic facilities, access to banking and financial services is compromised and in families moving as a unit, children suffer most as their basic healthcare is severely affected. To overcome these issues faced by the vulnerable communities, Digital Empowerment Foundation launched an ICT-enabled and community specific relief programme through virtual community and service facilitation. The 600+ digitally enabled information resource centers and 3000+ COVID-19 Digital Volunteer Force (C-DVFs) across 20 states and union territories are deliver emergency relief and response in the communities in which they are present. DEF has initiated the distribution of food packages to the local communities and 1, 50, 000 migrant workers/labourers in order to enable access to food. From disbursing the benefits of the scheme by providing linkages to those who were not registered, visiting door-to-door (keeping in mind the protocol of Social Distancing) to provide remote banking through digital access and micro-ATM to facilitate transactions, Tele-health & Tele-medicine support, creating community owned wireless system in telecom dark zones to provide uniform access to local content stored locally to combat misinformation and fake news in this time of crisis, Alternate livelihood opportunities in times of distress, counselling through awareness programmes –Digital Empowerment Foundation, in its effort to fight the pandemic has embarked on these series of initiatives. |
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Source Link Keywords: DEF, COVID 19 pandemic, digital inclusion, relief measures, community specific, virtual community, digital access |