Dr Najma Heptulla kindles the Jyoti of Computer Literacy for Women

NIIT, an IT training company, has started an initiative of 'Bringing 50,000 Women and Computers Together'. Dr Najma Heptulla, Deputy Chairperson Rajya Sabha kick started the initiative by pledging support to this initiative which would help women bridge the Digital Divide during the International Women's Month. 

Swift Jyoti for Women forms part of an initiatives NIIT has planned during the month of as a run up to International Women's Day on March 8. Rajendra Pawar, Chairman, NIIT announced that NIIT would train around 5,000 women Teachers and Principals of government Schools free of cost. 

The three-week task-oriented program is available at a price of Rs 749 and would be taught in four Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil & Gujarati, apart from English. The course would include 10 hours with the faculty, a two hour workshop and a six hour practice session. Learners are provided with a large number of task alternatives and are free to choose tasks that are meaningful to them. Participants of the Swift Jyoti for Women program would take home a legal copy of the language software, Windik -- free for personal use for a specified period of time. In addition, they would carry back their portfolio of work done during the sessions at the NIIT center. 

The content of Swift Jyoti program would benefit women in seeking and receiving information useful in their daily lives, such as, communication, consumer technology, healthcare, money management, children's education, holiday planning, etc. NIIT also kicked off a signature campaign targeted at creating awareness about the need for computer literacy among women and is expected to touch one million Indian women, this year. 

Describing computers are a great enabler and efficiency enhancer at work and at home, Dr Heptulla said, "As computers become an integral part of daily life, the challenge is to spread the use of computers among women at a much faster pace. And NIIT's Swift Jyoti program will play a meaningful role in this task." 

With this mission, NIIT dedicated the month of March 2002 to ''Bringing 

Women and Computers Together'' and observed what is called the International Women's Month and helped over 40,000 women learn computers through a unique computer literacy program 'Swift Jyoti for Women'.

Cyber News Service