Dharavi Diary's slum innovation project gets Google Rise Award

Indian social cause project Dharavi Diary, which aims at ushering in change in the communities and make slum children technology-friendly has received this year’s Google Rise Award.

The Slum & Rural Innovation Project, Gyanodaya Foundation, which is a non-profit organization is the only Indian organisation that got listed among one of the 30 organizations from 18 countries to receive the award.

The project was started by Nawneet Ranjan, a film maker who began the concept after he shot a documentary to capture the lives of people in slums. In the course of the project, slum children took lessons in computer science and have been developing mobile apps using the technology since three years.

Ranjan has been helping the children develop mobile apps with an aim to give them knowledge about the digital technology.

Speaking about the project, Ranjan, said, “Since three years, this project has reached out to children to teach them computer science and coding programmes which helps them learn and solve community problems. The computing skills along with design thinking, leadership skills and entrepreneurial skills focuses on empowering the youth and women from slums to become harbingers of change and realise their potential. This award will help us scale our project to more such urban slums of Mumbai and Pune.”

Two teenage girls from the area Savita Soni and Dipali Kadam, recently spoke in one of the TEDx session about the innovative mobile app they are developing on subjects related to clean & green areas, and women’s well-being.

Nicky Rigg, Programme Manager, Google Rise Awards program manager said, “This collective effort to inspire our next generation of technology innovators and creators will reach tens of thousands of students this year. We are excited to include Slum & Rural Innovation Project in our recent cohort of 28 organizations across 16 countries.”