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, yesterday.  In line with its commitment to create safe spaces for women and girls online, 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.

While addressing the audience Smt Rekha Sharma, Chairperson, NCW mentioned the continuous efforts of the Commission for empowering women in every sphere across the  nation. She 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."

Smt Rekha Sharma, Chairperson, NCW addressing  at the launch the fourth phase of Digital Shakti Campaign

The launch was followed by 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.

Padma Shri Sunitha Krishnan, General Secretary, Prajwala, Mr 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 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 3 Lakh women across India have been made aware of cyber safety tips and tricks, reporting & redressal mechanisms, data privacy and usage of technology for their benefits.

The third phase of the program 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 Center was also developed under the project to provide information on all the avenues of reporting in case a woman faces any cyber crime.

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SS/TFK