PIR eNGO Programme

A.     What is eNGO?

The eNGO programme, a national movement, is a joint effort of Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) and Public Interest Registry (PIR) to make grassroots organisations ICT enabled by providing a web-enabled platform through free website, domain name, and  providing capacity building through the eNGO training programme.

The eNGO programme strives to empower more than 3.3 million NGOs and Self Help Groups to create a virtual identity and increase their visibility for national and global outreach. eNGO programme offers websites in any local Indian language.

B.     Why eNGO?

Civil society organisations working at the grassroots level are the second largest information depots after the government bodies in India today, when it comes to having a rich repository of information about the bottom of the pyramid of Indian society. India is home to more than 3.3 million such organisations like NGOs, Self Help Groups and CBOs (Community Based Organisations). However, more than 70% of them lack a virtual identity and do not even have a basic webpage. Thereby, remaining unknown and fail to earn the much required appreciation and benefit from external sources that could boost their core functioning. In addition, most of the grassroots NGOs also lack intensive use of ICT tools for organisational efficiency and seamless communication.

The eNGO programme steps in to help address the dearth of information content issue in India’s poor digital economy by tapping these grassroots institutions that have readily available content but, lack the means in projecting the same. Besides, eNGO also works towards building capacity of NGOs to use ICT tools and also conduct training workshops for the same.

C.      For Whom?

• For all those grassroots civil society and community based organisations active in India who are in dire need of a visible virtual identity and presence for global and national outreach;
• For those grassroots civil society organisations who want to reach out to maximum stakeholders beyond their immediate community;
• For those communities wanting to utilise modern ICT infrastructure to join the global networking forum for connectivity linkages;
• For those communities based organisations, that are cost strapped to avail a range of web services at an affordable cost with customised solutions.