Facebook launches digital literacy library in Bangla, five other languages

Facebook has launched the Digital Literacy Library, a collection of lessons in six languages—Bangla, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, to train 3,00,000 people in India by end of 2018.

This was announced at Facebook’s South Asia Safety Summit held in India on Monday.

Over 70 organisations from five countries, including Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Afghanistan joined the summit, according to The Economic Times.

“Everyone deserves to feel safe on Facebook, and we feel it is important that we help people safely navigate the Internet,” Antigone Davis, Global head for Safety, Facebook, said.

She said, “The launch of the Digital Literacy Library, the child safety hackathon and several offline training programmes we run in partnership with local experts, reaffirm our seriousness in combating online abuse.”

“We expect to train 3,00,000 people by end of 2018, and we will multiply these efforts in times to come.” She added.

The ready-to-use lessons in the Library are drawn from the Youth and Media team at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

The library will be a resource for educators looking to address digital literacy and help young people build the skills needed for safely enjoying digital technology.

“These trainings are targeted primarily towards women and youth and are being done in collaboration with organisations such as Cyber Peace Foundation, Learning Links Foundation, Internet and Mobile Association of India, Gaon Connection, and Centre for Social Research, to name a few,” Davis added.