Digital Literacy Curriculum

When women in extreme poverty have the digital world at their fingertips, change happens

In 2021, with the support of the Digital Development Partnership, administered by the World Bank, and the EQUALS Global Partnership Access Coalition, Trickle Up teamed up with AVSI Foundation Uganda to test two approaches for women’s digital literacy and inclusion.

Photo credit: AVSI Foundation

The advent of COVID-19 in March 2020 sparked a digital revolution globally. We set out to reconnect the world and mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic. But as this took place, the gender digital divide—the gap between women and men’s technology access and usage—which had been shrinking for years, once again began to increase. With a clear need to ensure women can access and use essential tools to develop their businesses and cope with the economic and social shocks that the pandemic wrought, a stronger connection between the goal of women’s economic empowerment and developing women’s digital literacy skills emerged.

That’s why Trickle Up and AVSI Foundation Uganda, with support from the Digital Development Partnership, administered by the World Bank, and the EQUALS Global Partnership Access Coalition, undertook a yearlong project to test two approaches to improve women’s digital literacy and inclusion. The team worked in Uganda with refugee and host community women already on their trajectory out of poverty and sought to increase their agency, ownership and usage of smartphones to power economic and social inclusion.

Digital Literacy Skills

%

31% of animated video plus and 17% of animated video only participants had digital literacy skills. Compare with 5% for both groups before the project began.