Focus: GS-II Social Justice
Why in news?
A series of initiatives were announced by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs which included the Tribal Health and Nutrition Portal ‘Swasthya’ and e-newsletter on health and nutrition ALEKH; opening of National Overseas Portal and National Tribal Fellowship Portal.
Details of Initiatives
‘Swasthya’
- The e-portal ‘Swasthya’ is a first of its kind providing all health and nutrition related information of the tribal population of India in a single platform.
- Swasthya will also curate innovative practices, research briefs, case studies, and best practices collected from different parts of India to facilitate the exchange of evidence, expertise and experiences.
- The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has recognized Piramal Swasthya as the Centre of Excellence for Knowledge Management (CoE for KM) for Health and Nutrition.
- The CoE will constantly engage with the Ministry and provide inputs to drive evidence-based policy and decision-making pertaining to health and nutrition of the tribal population of India.
Going Online as Leaders (GOAL)
- The GOAL programme is a Facebook program aimed at guiding and encouraging tribal girls from across India to become village-level digital young leaders for their communities.
- The programme launched by Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) in partnership with Facebook India, will help to connect underprivileged young tribal youth with senior expert mentors in the areas of business, fashion and arts to learn digital and life skills.
- It aims to digitally skill and empower 5000 youth from tribal communities to become leaders of tomorrow by leveraging the power of digital technology.
- The core areas of mentorship program are Digital Literacy, life Skills and Leadership & Entrepreneurship.
- GOAL Project is aimed at identifying and mobilizing 2500 renowned people from industry (policy makers and influencers), teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, social workers etc., known for their achievements in their domain areas, to personally mentor tribal youths across India.
- In the second phase of the program, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and Facebook together will digitally mentor 5000 young women in India’s tribal dominated districts, and will help to close the digital gender gap by enabling more women to get online and access digital services.
Other initiatives
- Ministry of Tribal Affairs has been recently awarded the 66th SKOCH Gold Award for “Empowerment of Tribals through IT enabled Scholarship Schemes” under guidance of DBT Mission.
- The national evaluation of Centrally Sponsored Schemes focused on social inclusion by KPMG has recognised the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Portal of Ministry of Tribal Affairs as a best practice in e-governance; leading to greater transparency, accountability and radical improvement in service delivery to Scheduled Tribe students.
- National Fellowship and Overseas Scholarship Portal will bring greater transparency and easy information to the ST students.
