U.S. Department Grant: Empowering Cybersmart Young Women in India

The objective of CyberSmart is to help youth participants develop critical thinking skills, provide tools, and generate awareness about their cyber footprint and privacy, develop competencies to deal with online safety issues such as hacking and bullying, and become responsible digital content creators and users.

The program will aim to do the following:

·        Train a group of 650 young women from Kolkata and its suburbs in West Bengal, the gateway to Northeast India and Southeast Asia, to be cybersmart and to be able to share best practices to mitigate cyber-threats and discuss countering disinformation strategy in their communities. 

·        The project will be implemented through a series of meetings, and in-person workshops at the American Center Kolkata over a period of 12 months. The Program will be spread to additional American Spaces in the country either virtually or in-person and train more women students primarily in English or Hindi.

·        Build a countering disinformation strategy that will be shared with educational institutes, media professionals and community leaders for further action and for consideration of inclusion in the existing curriculum.

·        The project will strengthen the young women students’ capacity to access the digital space and become resilient to cyber-threats to ensure a stable Indo-Pacific and support regional cybersecurity. 

·        Over 12-18 months the project will develop the strategy and then participants will lead follow on workshops in their communities. The trainers can also lead follow-on workshops at other American Spaces across India to train more girl students and multiply the scope of work either through virtual or in-person sessions. 

The objective of CyberSmart is to help youth participants develop critical thinking skills, provide tools, and generate awareness about their cyber footprint and privacy, develop competencies to deal with online safety issues such as hacking and bullying, and become responsible digital content creators and users.

The program will aim to do the following:

·        Train a group of 650 young women from Kolkata and its suburbs in West Bengal, the gateway to Northeast India and Southeast Asia, to be cybersmart and to be able to share best practices to mitigate cyber-threats and discuss countering disinformation strategy in their communities. 

·        The project will be implemented through a series of meetings, and in-person workshops at the American Center Kolkata over a period of 12 months. The Program will be spread to additional American Spaces in the country either virtually or in-person and train more women students primarily in English or Hindi.

·        Build a countering disinformation strategy that will be shared with educational institutes, media professionals and community leaders for further action and for consideration of inclusion in the existing curriculum.

·        The project will strengthen the young women students’ capacity to access the digital space and become resilient to cyber-threats to ensure a stable Indo-Pacific and support regional cybersecurity. 

·        Over 12-18 months the project will develop the strategy and then participants will lead follow on workshops in their communities. The trainers can also lead follow-on workshops at other American Spaces across India to train more girl students and multiply the scope of work either through virtual or in-person sessions.