Nasscom Foundation Seeks Industry Support For Social Development

Nasscom Foundation (NF) recently organised its third annual national level knowledge network partners’ meet at New Delhi. The two day event titled ‘Opportunities for Knowledge Centres: Sustainability and the Future’, focused on further expanding the role of the Nasscom Knowledge Network centres and identifying options to make the NKN centre sustainable within local communities.

The Nasscom Knowledge Network (NKN) is a network of telecentres or knowledge centres that provides public access to Information and Communication Technologies for educational, personal, social and economic development. The centres provide multi-purpose services to communities such as education, health, livelihood programmes, e-governance by facilitating access to information and essential services. These knowledge centres are run by NGOs with support from NF and its resource partners (IT companies, who have developed socially relevant content and applications). Initiated in July 2005, the NKN is spread across 12 states, 72 districts and 180 centres.

Emphasising the need to develop partnerships to facilitate more service delivery from the knowledge centres, Som Mittal, president, Nasscom, said, “Partners’ Meet such as these are the best way to gauge if all the hard work and resources are channelised in the right direction. It is a proven fact that intra-partner relations enhance capacities and capabilities of knowledge centres and help the centres in becoming self-sustainable in the long run.”

Rufina Fernandes, CEO, Nasscom Foundation, said, “Our NKN centres are poised to change the social landscape of the country. To make this dream a reality, we at Nasscom Foundation are persistent in devising innovative ways through which we can get these facilities to the grass root level and bridge the gap between the civic and the corporate. However, we look forward to ample support and enthusiastic contribution of IT companies in achieving this noble endeavour”.