Aitizaz Hassan

Digital Village Pakistan, a technology startup, has been striving to provide training and facilities to the residents of rural areas of Pakistan to bring them into the mainstream of the digital world, WealthPK reports. The startup aims to help rural people to gain access to quality education, earning, social development and other online facilities. It works in the remote and far-off areas of interior Sindh, Balochistan, tribal districts and South Punjab.

Sajid Bhutto, the founder of Digital Village Pakistan, told WealthPK that they have initiated training programmes from Sehwan in the Jamshoro district of Sindh. They are working in 20 villages of Jamshoro to empower villagers digitally by imparting training to them. He said that village populations in Sindh do not have access to quality education, social development and networking opportunities. “Our aim is to enable the rural people through digital facilities to bring them into the mainstream of the digital world,” he added.

Sajid Bhutto said that Digital Village Pakistan established a central unit in a target area to connect multiple villages and provide options for digital literacy, information technology solutions and online earnings to the local population, laying the basis of “global village on a micro level.”

He said that they chalked out a plan in three phases. “Right now, we are focusing on the first phase, which is educating people about digital things. In the second phase, we promote the e-commerce of handicrafts made by local men and women of the villages. In the third phase, we will develop the tech products and launch the startups owned by local people,” he added.

Sajid Bhutto said that so far, they have trained 180 people of emerging talent while 500 others are at the awareness level. He said that most villagers are not even aware of their problems. The first phase of Digital Village Pakistan is to promote critical thinking among rural communities. In the initial phase, they are also supporting the traditional ideas digitally, improving the skills of people and then trying to explore their minds to discover emerging ideas.

He said that currently, they are not able to discover creative digital ideas.  After exploring some ideas, they will send the trainees to national incubation centres in Hyderabad and Jamshoro. “We want to form digital units in tehsils and connect villages through it,” he added.

Sajid Bhutto said that due to a lack of awareness and education, it is a challenge to break the traditional mindset because most parents are used to putting their children in the traditional labour force. He said that the rural areas of Sindh are deprived of the facilities of infrastructure, electricity and connectivity. “That’s why we have set up a digitally equipped mobile laboratory,” he added.

Recently, Higher Education Commission (HEC) funded 15 startups and provided a grant of up to $35,000 to each in a pitching competition. Digital Village Pakistan has also won the prize and has devised a special plan to utilise this fund in ongoing and new projects. “We are going to conduct some business surveys in rural areas. After the findings of the surveys, we will launch some startups on the concept of business ideas with solutions for problems to make the life of village easy and comfortable,” Sajid Bhutto told WealthPK.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk