World Links, a Washington DC-based international NGO, has announced plans to bridge the digital divide in India by training secondary school teachers in the classroom application of IT. World Links, the lead NGO in the World Economic Forum’s Digital Divide Initiative for India, will provide school connectivity, basic computer literacy, and teacher professional development training to teachers in Delhi, Karn-ataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

The programme was launched in Delhi, with the NGO’s first professional development workshop for 35 master trainers, delivered in close partnership with SchoolNet India. “Due to the existence of hundreds of schools with existing computer labs and telephone lines, we decided to initially focus the programme on areas with infrastructure, thereby best leveraging the limited funds we currently have for work in India. With proper financial support and private sector partnerships, we will definitely look into bringing our expertise in rural connectivity to backward states such as Bihar,” said Neelesh Arora, a member of World Links’s India Advisory Council. In addition, the organisation will use the Internet to connect Indian schools with schools across the world for collaborative learning projects.

In conjunction with its local partners, Intel and SchoolNet India, World Links will provide a total of four phases of its award-winning teacher professional development training programme to reach 1,500 teachers and 30,000 students in three years. This project in India is being partially funded by the Dutch Government and World Bank grant funds, and will leverage $3 million in partner-financed ICT-in-education investments in India.