Pallitathya Help-Line Center

This initiative uses face-to-face contact and information and communication technologies (ICTs) to empower women economically, as well as to share information within the community related to such services as:

• Directory services: information about location, availability, and cost of service centres related to health, legal support and agriculture
• Market information services: daily market prices of agricultural products in some selected markets of the country
• Weather information services
• Education information services, such as admission deadlines in different educational institutions
• Emergency information dissemination services: reports about epidemics, disease outbreaks, ruin in crop fields, sudden violations of human rights, natural disasters, etc.

Specifically, Pallitathya employs "Mobile Operator Ladies" to move from door-to-door with mobile phone in hand, enabling villagers to ask questions related to livelihood, agriculture, health, and legal rights, and so on. The premise is that, by bringing an actual mobile phone door-to-door, women can play central roles in bridging the gap between information providers and isolated rural citizens (especially women) who are living in poverty. (Anonymity of the person requesting information is kept intact). The questions are handled by Help-Desk Operators at D.Net's headquarter operators in Dhaka, who are equipped with an ICT-based system to respond to specific queries within a short time through use of a database-driven software application and the internet.

While the service is offered to both men and women, a key strategy involves using technology to increase women's access to information and economic opportunity. The idea involves fostering the development of women who avail of the help-line service by helping them realise their potential and worth in society, increase their incomes through current information, and increase their authority over spending decisions. As mobile operator ladies, women were consciously given a crucial role as "infomediaries" in an effort to increase their self-worth, their potential to earn, and their knowledge about various issues. Further, according to organisers, women help-desk operators can enhance their knowledge of issues and improve their communication skills.

To expand the information database, resource persons from government, non-government organisations (NGOs), health groups and human rights organisations partnered with D.Net to provide a steady stream of responses to frequently asked questions (FAQs). In fact, D.Net identifies partnership as a core strategy and reason for its success; the organisation has drawn on its collaborators to: (1) gather livelihood-related information (2) gain acceptance in local communities, and (3) obtain subsidised service charges from infrastructure providers. D.Net claims that the content providers have benefited from further outreach at minimal cost; the local community groups have benefited from increased services and economic activities in the community; and the infrastructure providers have benefited from increased publicity.

Women, Economic Development.

The Pallitathya Help-Line Center was motivated by assessment findings which showed that lack of timely and relevant information was a major bottleneck to rural development, and a leading factor in the exploitation of the underprivileged, particularly women. D.Net notes that, while there is "disproportionate hype around using computers and Internet for tackling issues of economic deprivation and social injustice," due to lack of adequate infrastructure facilities with very low teledensity (1.7%, mostly in urban areas) and internet penetration, many underprivileged rural Bandaldeshis cannot use these tools to access information (78% of Bangladesh's citizens live in rural areas, with 35.6% living below the poverty line.) In contrast, the mobile phone has 60% of geographical coverage in Bangladesh, which is infamous for floods and other natural disasters and which has has low electricity coverage (20%). According to D.Net, while human rights organisations, legal support centres, health-service providers, disaster mitigation centres, and the like are actively involved in providing various kinds of support services to those living in poverty and in rural areas, these organisations also suffer from lack of timely accessibility to villagers. The help-line is designed to serve as a platform to bridge these various information gaps.

Among the 4 villages chosen for the research phase, the village which had the lowest income level and was the most remote was the most active in terms of making calls to the help-line. Further, housewives represented the biggest user-group, perhaps because they are the most deprived in terms of access to information. D.Net explains, "It is often found that telecenter-based information services are not able to address their needs sufficiently due to lack of their mobility and other social constraints." Finally, the research project found that most queries were in the areas of health (majority of which came from housewives) and agriculture (majority of which came from farmers).

For its efforts, the initiative was named the winner of the 2005 Gender and ICT Awards.