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Bangladesh Combats “Triple Illiteracy” with Bicycle-Riding Infoladies

“The InfoLady acts as the human interface between a knowledge-base and the rural illiterate and print-disabled people."

“Being an InfoLady not only makes me independent and self-sufficient, but I am much smarter now; I can talk better, mix with people easily and [am] far more confident about my future.” -- InfoLady Morseda Akter (pictured).

For most rural people in Bangladesh, poverty, suffering and often extreme hardship is a way of life. In the Gaibandha district of northern Bangladesh however, so are a band of women who cycle from village to village, carrying laptops, mobile phones and medical supplies to give thousands of poor villagers access to information.

Spearheading a social revolution, these women -- called InfoLadies -- bring crucial information to the doorsteps of thousands of remote Bangladeshis trapped in a cycle of poverty, health problems and natural disaster.

Until now, though, there haven’t been many of them; just about 50 in fact, covering about 25 districts of rural Bangladesh. But as this two-year-old experiment comes of age, there will soon be thousands of them nationwide.

“Encouraged by the success of InfoLadies the Bangladesh government is setting up the infrastructure so that this model could be replicated countrywide,” says Mosharrof Hussain, one of the directors of this program.

InfoLadies has created quite a stir in the country and is a result of a realization that distributing food aids or monetary loans (microcredit) to assist the poor only go so far in getting them out of poverty. But access to information and knowledge would provide a much wider and lasting impact on alleviating poverty.

Started by a non-profit organization called D.Net, the concept aims to provide solutions and answers to some of the most common problems faced by people in villages. According to Ananya Raihan, executive director, D.Net, even as the development paradigm in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, revolves around poverty eradication, the country also needs a non-income poverty eradication approach for sustainable economic development. For instance, despite a high poverty level -- with over 35 percent of the population living below $1 per day -- the greatest woes of the rural poor in particular is not lack of earning opportunities, but lack of basic facilities including healthcare, education and communication.

Accordingly, the country has a greater need to urgently address a wide range of issues that influence the improvement of living standards, including access to quality education, access to health care and access to productive employment opportunities.

However, due to a phenomenon called “triple illiteracy”, access to information and knowledge -- that acts as an enabler for accessing resources -- continues to elude the rural poor.

D.Net defines triple literacy as the inability to desire, seek and judge crucial information due to the inability to read and write. As well as due to the inability to use technology gadgets like mobiles phones.

“As knowledge intermediaries then, the concept addresses the problem of triple illiteracy,” says Md Forhad Uddin, deputy program director, D.Net. “The InfoLady acts as the human interface between a knowledge-base and the rural illiterate and print-disabled people, thereby helping them in deriving the benefit of modern ICT for accessing information.”

“While a farmer can get current prices for his produce, an ailing [person] can get access to information for treatment. Similarly, an InfoLady can bring recourse to an unfairly treated housewife as well,” he says.

But being an InfoLady is not easy. “They undergo a rigorous selection process,” says Mosharrof Hussain. They are judged of the basis of 14 criteria of which most important is their quick learning ability. “An InfoLady will always be dealing with new information and new technology. She has to be a quick learner,” says Hussain.

Having received specialized training and carrying technology like a laptop, a mobile phone, and basic medical supplies and instruments, an Infolady bicycles to remote areas to connect villagers to the information and resources they need. On average, each week, an InfoLady covers 15 to 20 villages catering to a total 50,000 households.

The laptop is loaded with information in the form of simple text, pictures and multimedia in the local Bangla language to address all literacy levels. The database in their laptops enables InfoLadies to often provide instant answers to a plethora of queries, and they can also connect to a rural information center called Pallitathya Kendra, which acts as an information-control hub.

“Basically the InfoLadies work on the hub and spoke model where the rural information centers [are] the hub and the InfoLadies are spokes,” says Hussain. Twenty-three information centers have been franchised to local non-government organizations against a fixed fee or revenue sharing.

Forhad Uddin says D.Net, a not-for-profit social service organization which owns the model, needs the cash to expand this model as well as for meeting expenses for running InfoLadies, content and infrastructure creation, and logistics building.

D.Net also subsidizes part of the $1,200 that the InfoLadies must invest in the technology equipment they carry. “But we are talking to financial instructions so that in a few months they can get loans from banks and financial institutions in Bangladesh directly,” says Hussain.

“I joined the league (of InfoLadies) to serve rural Bangladesh and play a role in its development but it has also become an earnings source for me,” says Morseda Akter, a 20-year old rural resident who was selected to be an InfoLady four months back.

Morseda invested about $200 initially to pay for her equipment -- the balance was funded by D.Net -- but she says that she is already earning $200 per month. “With that I have started paying back the rest of the equipment cost in installments to D.Net.”

In a country where rural women are usually reared to get married young and to be a homemaker, being an InfoLady has indeed opened up Morseda’s world.

“Being an InfoLady not only makes me independent and self-sufficient, but I am much smarter now; I can talk better, mix with people easily and [am] far more confident about my future,” says Morseda. “I know I will have to get married someday. But I will ensure that I get married to a local so that I can continue as an InfoLady as long as I want to.”

While InfoLadies has given Morseda a new meaning in life, for Riti Akhter though, it has allowed her to afford college education. The 19-year old, who became an InfoLady four months back, says that the money she earns (about $175 per month) not only pays for her education expense, but also helps support her five-member family.

“We adopt the policy of no-exclusion and no-refusal, which means that an InfoLady can never refuse information to a seeker,” says Hussain. “But they are allowed to charge a reasonable fee for their services to whoever can afford to pay. The InfoLady is also allowed to sell household necessities that they buy from, and sell the rural produce thay may gather from the villagers back to, the information centers,” says Hussain.

“In a way then, these information centers or hubs also act as a supply chains.”

The InfoLadies model is now matured and ready to take off. It has demonstrated that besides helping sustainable economic development, it can be an effective e-governance tool as well.

“For instance, InfoLadies has been found to be very effective for disseminating 13 types of information in areas like pension, vulnerable group development, handicap assistance, and the likes,” says Hussain,

Consequently, D.Net is working with the government to set up 4,500 information centers across the country, each of which will have a target of employing at least 9 InfoLadies. “We hope to achieve that target in next five years,” says Hussain.

Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.