Bridging the digital divide for 30,000 poor villagers

Stella Advisors supports the charity Hand in Hand. Based in the state of Tamil Nadu in Southern India, Hand in Hand provides business training and access to microfinance to enable women in the poorest rural communities to start small, family based enterprises in their villages. The increased family income enables poor women to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.

Stella Advisors wants to support media access, democracy and entrepreneurship, and has therefore decided to create 10 Citizens Centres.

Hand in Hand's Citizens Centre Project aims to facilitate poor and rural communities' access to information and communication technology, and economic integration with nearby urban services and markets.

The Citizens' Centre enterprises are based on an entrepreneurial model. Each centre functions as a commercially viable, small service business and is run by female entrepreneurs enrolled in Hand in Hand's self-help groups. The Centres offer residents of local villages access to e-learning, desktop publishing, and screen-printing, as well as registration for voting, and assistance in obtaining a passport, birth certificate and driving licence.

Hand in Hand will identify the women most suited to becoming micro-entrepreneurs, and provide them with the basic business training and support to enable them to run a micro-enterprise.

The list of women entrepreneurs supported is below and updates on each enterprise follows if you click on the links.

Entrepreneurs

-Phase 1-
Ms. Sathya
Ms. Saathya
Ms. Lakshmi
Ms. Devaki
Ms. Senthamil

-Phase 2-
Ms. Banupriya
Ms. Devi
Ms. Vanaja
Ms. Chandrakala
Ms. Usha Devi

To read more about Hand in Hand, please click here.