30 Jul 2024 Digital literacy strengthens voice of Indigenous Soliga communities in India

A WACC-supported project run by Ideosync Media Combine is enhancing digital inclusion of the Soliga Indigenous communities in the Biligiri Rangan Hills of southwestern India’s Karnataka state.

The Soliga tribal communities, with 60,000 members, have faced decades of disenfranchisement. They have been advocating over the past decade to secure their rights to their forests, lands, and language as well as to better schooling and healthcare.

Geographical isolation and a lack of digital education mean that Soliga youth, and Soliga young women in particular, are much less digitally connected than their counterparts in rest of the country.

This lack of digital connection limits access to government services, employment, and further education and online resources. Many boys have taken to alcoholism, and early marriage is a common for girls.

According to Venu Arora, Ideosync director, external approaches to community development have been driven by a welfare model rather than one rooted in human rights and social justice.

“The lack of digital access is an infringement on people’s right to information and communications,” she says.

The communities’ lack of digital literacy also acts to reinforce negative narratives — social, cultural, economic — linked to their Indigenous identity, she notes.

Ideosync, a communication for social change organization in New Delhi, is promoting digital inclusion of the Soliga communities through an intensive digital media literacy program.

The Soliga FreeDem program draws on a methodology for digital media literacy centers of learning, or pathshala, developed by the WACC partner. The schools are embedded within communities and are responsive to the community’s social and cultural contexts, says Arora.

The project aims to establish a local digital platform run by young people from the community and offered in Soliganudi, a spoken language at risk of disappearing.

A group of 20 young people is being trained to use smartphones and the internet to document their traditional indigenous lifestyle and issues of concern they have. These Soliga FreeDem fellows will then produce podcasts and short videos in their own dialects to share with the larger community.

Arora says the project will enhance the visibility and voice of the Soliga communities and empower them to further their own communication and information rights.

“The trainees want to preserve their Soliga language and tell their stories using digital media.”

Young members of the Soliga tribal community take part in a Soliga FreeDem digital media literacy training session.
Photo: Ideosync Media Combine

WACC works in partnership with Ideosync Media Combine and other communication rights and sustainable development organizations worldwide through its Communication for All Program (CAP), with support from Bread for the World-Germany.