The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in the use of digital tools for day-to-day tasks. The existing infrastructure has highlighted existing gaps in the access to these technologies among workers in the informal sector, especially women. To bridge this gap, SEWA Federation has designed a series of training workshops aimed to increase digital literacy and build the capacities of women workers in the informal sector.
In the last week we conducted two training sessions with SEWA’s community health workers (called Aarogya Sevikas). The first session was conducted to enable optimal use of WhatsApp as a mass communication and marketing tool in their community health work. Later in the week, another training was conducted on basic phone photography techniques like capturing portraits and documenting events to improve the quality of material that they can share with their community members.
“During the pandemic, we were compelled to use smartphones to carry out health awareness work. For many of us, this was the first time using a smartphone and [we] did not have complete knowledge of operating a smartphone or the apps. Attending this training has helped us understand how we can efficiently use digital devices for work and particularly the ways we can employ WhatsApp to carry out work remotely,” says Roshanben, a community worker with Lok Swasthya SEWA Trust (LSST).
