The National Commission for Women (NCW) launched Digital Shakti 4.0, a pan-India project for digitally skilling and empowering girls and women in cyberspace.
The fourth phase of the Digital Shakti programme focuses on making women digitally aware and skilled in standing up against any inappropriate or illegal online activity. The NCW launched it in collaboration with Meta and CyberPeace Foundation.
Rekha Sharma, Chairperson of NCW, mentioned the commission’s efforts to empower women across the nation in every sphere. She stated that the new phase would prove to be a milestone in making safe cyber spaces for women. Digital Shakti is accelerating the digital participation of girls and women by training them to keep themselves safe online and use technology to their advantage. The Digital Shakti project will contribute towards fighting cyber violence against girls and women and creating the internet to be a safe space for them.
An interactive panel discussion on the ‘Safe Spaces Online Combatting Cyber-enabled Human Trafficking and Combatting Other forms of Online Violence’ followed the launch of Digital Shakti. The discussion took place to provide expert opinions from the government, industry and academia for addressing the issue of online women’s safety and provide an approach to ensure better online safety for women.
The Digital Shakti programme started in June 2018 to help women across India raise the digital front’s awareness level, fight cybercrime and build resilience in the most effective ways. Through this project, more than 3 lakh women in India have been made aware of cyber safety tricks and tips, data privacy, technology usage and reporting and redressal mechanisms for their benefit.
The program’s third phase was started in March 2021 by the NCW Chairperson in the presence of Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, MP, Ladakh and Lieutenant Governor Radha Krishna Mathur. In its third phase, a resource centre was developed under the project to give information on reporting avenues when women face cybercrimes.
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