I, Dr. M. Priyamvadha, Professor, Department of Criminology, University of Madras, Chennai, India, received the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) Impact Award for the year 2023 from the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational Cultural Affairs, Washington DC. The Public Diplomacy Section, U.S. Consulate General, Chennai has rendered undue support to receive this project. The project is titled as “Combating the Technology Facilitated Gender Based Violence against Women and Girls (TFGBV)”. In this project, it is proposed to conduct training programs on digital literacy for 350 women and girls from 7 cities in Tamil Nadu (50 Women and girls from each city) to safeguard them from technology facilitated gender-based violence. The cities include three Tier I cities, two Tier II cities and two Tier III cities (one from part – I and another from part II). Thus, it is decided to choose Chennai, Coimbatore, and Madurai from Tier – I cities, Dharmapuri and Maduranthakam from Tier II cities and Kothagiri from Tier III (Part – I) cities and Rameswaram from Tier III (Part – II) cities.
As an outcome of the project, it is also proposed to form a “Voluntary Women’s
Cyber Consortium (VWCC)” with these 350 trained women from Tamil Nadu. These VWCC members will be the torch bearers who will pull the cart by spreading the knowledge and continue their work even after completion of the project. It is also proposed to create a website that would contain study materials, audio-visual clippings, and blogs by the stakeholders and cyber security professionals, a column to provide opportunity in cyber space for women and girls etc. VWCC will also send periodical information relating to laws and its recent amendments, statistics related to reported cases, judgements and redressal mechanism, best practices in various states of India on cyber security and about TFGBV through online platforms etc to the VWCC members to keep them informed. Thus, the core motto of this project is to train women and girls to enhance the safe use of digital technology, particularly the usage of internet and social media platforms.