NASSCOM Foundation today announced its partnership with American Express to drive social innovation through NASSCOM Foundation’s NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum, and provide free technology education to young girls utilizing the freely available public library space as training centres.
American Express will be donating INR 1.32 Crores for these projects from its CSR budgets. Of this total grant amount, INR 1 Crore will be utilized towards NASSCOM Social Innovation Forum in providing grants & mentorship to social innovators in the area of Financial Inclusion, Healthcare &Sanitation, and Environment. The remaining, INR 32 lakhs will be utilized under NASSCOM Foundation’s Indian Public Library Movement to train young girls on technology skills, using public libraries as the training centres. The project – Technology empowering Girls will be run in 4 libraries, catering to a minimum 200 adolescent girls each year, per library.
“As an organization known for its service, we are constantly expanding the definition of what that means to us. We believe giving back to the community is not only integral to running a business sustainably, but also part of our individual responsibilities as citizens of the world. In our own experience, the most impactful leadership and innovation in our company has come from women, and this gives us the sense of purpose to partner with NSIF on this initiative to pass the baton to empower young women in the country," said Pradeep Kapur, Senior Vice President, American Express Global Servicing Network – Japan and Asia Pacific.
Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOM Foundation said, “Most of the social issues can be solved using technology as an enabler but the use of technology becomes limited to the extent of tech knowledge a person has. We believe that if you train a girl, you train a generation giving them the power to become true change agents for the society. We are glad to partner with American Express, where we are trying to strengthen both the technology based social innovation ecosystem and the ease of technology adoption for the underserved. This partnership will also be giving a renewed purpose to the public libraries and we hope that more corporates come forward to help reimagine and reposition our public libraries as the centre of our community engagement.”
