The following is a guest post by Mobilink.
Mobilink recognises that an educated society that is socially inclusive is the nation’s key to ensuring sustainable development. In order to promote education and aid sustainable development in the communities that Mobilink operates in, Mobilink has launched a Mobile Based Literacy program that brings literacy to women and girls in the rural areas of Pakistan. Women and girls form half the population of Pakistan yet female literacy rates lag far behind literacy rates for men. This gap is more pronounced in rural areas where cultural taboos often prevent women from getting access to education.
In order to bridge this gap and to enhance the lives of women and girls with literacy, Mobilink used its core strength in ICT to develop a cellular-based solution to bring education to women and girls through their cell phones. In collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and a local NGO Bunyad, in 2009, Mobilink pioneered an SMS-based literacy program aimed at enhancing the literacy retention problem among women and girls in rural areas while also disseminating useful information to them through an SMS-based distance learning model in Pakistan’s national language (Urdu).
The project aims to bring adolescent girls and women into the fold of the technological revolution by empowering them with a cellular connection so they can connect and communicate and use it to receive instruction in basic Urdu reading and writing skills, mathematical concepts and other critical areas such as health, hygiene and disaster management.
The Mobilink program is a first of its kind initiative. Women and girls receive instruction in basic Urdu reading and writing and mathematical skills at the homes of local teachers trained by the local NGO for a period of 6 months. The learners simultaneously receive informational messages on their cell phones that cover the course content and continue to receive these messages a few months after they have completed the course with their local teacher to promote retention of course materials.
Bound by social and cultural barriers, they wind up being denied economic opportunities and are also invariably excluded from the benefits of technology. This was a key challenge for the program and considerable resistance was faced on the part of the parents and community leaders to the idea of allowing girls to have mobile phones, largely due to the conservative social norms of the area. To overcome the given situation, socially acceptable and useful literature was carefully chosen to justify ownership of a mobile handset by female learners.
Also, female teachers trained for cultural sensitivity were used to avoid ‘purdah’ concerns (the majority of the women in rural Pakistan are not allowed to interact with males who are not close relatives). Resistance softened once people began to see the nature of the messages and the benefits of the program became visible. The teachers also reported a stark improvement in the confidence of the young girls, as owning a mobile phone made a difference to their sense of security.
Having met with remarkable success and positive feedback from communities, Mobilink is committed to continuing and improving this program. To date, Mobilink has helped educate 1500 women and girls in rural areas through this program in its first two phases in which the program and its design were tested rigorously. In the spirit of continuous commitment to female empowerment programs and to innovation, Mobilink has launched the third phase of this project and will target 2,500 learners in this phase of the project in collaboration with project partners.
For the third phase of this project, Mobilink has developed a messaging solution that the NGO partners will use to disseminate instructional messages and questions to learners. Program participants will be able to respond to daily questions via SMS and therefore there will be daily SMS-based monitoring of the student’s progress. Mobilink has donated 2,500 SIMS, developed the messaging application and will provide messaging facilities for the educational messages free of cost for this initiative. As a value addition, the third phase will also enable 100 participating teachers to coordinate with supervisors and report on student progress via data-enabled SIMs provided by Mobilink. The current phase also extends the outreach of the program, reaching out to learners in KPK, Punjab and Sindh through 100 learning centres.
Mobilink remains committed to the uplift and development of communities across Pakistan and particularly dedicated to helping Pakistan erase illiteracy and empower all Pakistanis with the benefits of education and technology so that they can improve their lives, the conditions of their families and communities and not lag behind the rest of the world in the information technology revolution.