NCW launches Digital Shakti 4.0 for digital skilling of women

The National Commission for Women (NCW) launched the fourth phase of Digital Shakti Campaign, a pan-India project on digitally empowering and skilling women and girls in the cyberspace, on Wednesday. 

This was announced via a press release by the Ministry of Women and Child Development on the Press Information Bureau website of the Government of India.

According to the statement, Digital Shakti 4.0 is focused on making women digitally skilled and aware to stand up against any illegal/inappropriate activity online. NCW launched it in collaboration with CyberPeace Foundation and Meta.

Rekha Sharma, Chairperson, NCW, said, “This new phase will prove to be a milestone in ensuring safe cyber spaces for women. Digital Shakti has been accelerating the digital participation of women and girls by training them to use technology to their advantage and to keep themselves safe online. I believe the project will continue to contribute towards the larger goal of fighting cyber violence against women and girls and make internet a safer space for them."

The launch also featured an interactive panel discussion on “Safe Spaces Online Combatting Cyber-enabled Human Trafficking & Combatting Other forms of Online Violence” in order to provide keen opinions from experts from the industry, government, and academia to address the issue of online women safety from all tangents and provide whole approach to ensure better women safety online.

Sunitha Krishnan, General Secretary, Prajwala; Ashutosh Pande, Senior Research Officer, NCW; Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme Court of India, and Advisor, CPF; Veerendra Mishra, AIG, SISF, Madhya Pradesh Police and Advisor, NCW; Preeti Chauhan, Director-Operations, CPF, participated in the discussion.

Digital Shakti was started in June 2018 to help women across the nation to raise the awareness level on the digital front, to build resilience, and fight cyber-crime in the most effective ways. Through this project, over three lakh women across India have been made aware of cyber safety tips and tricks, reporting and redressal mechanisms, data privacy and usage of technology for their benefits.

The third phase of the programme was started in March 2021 with the launch at Leh by NCW Chairperson in the presence of Lieutenant Governor Shri Radha Krishna Mathur & Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, MP, Ladakh. In the third phase, a resource centre was also developed under the project to provide information on all avenues of reporting in case a woman faces any cyber crime.