EkStep Foundation joins the DPGA

In Oslo today, at an event hosted by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) on India’s impressive digital transformation, Nandan Nilekani, Co-Founder and Chairperson of EkStep Foundation, announced their membership in the Digital Public Goods Alliance. 

EkStep’s mission is to improve literacy and numeracy by enhancing access to learning opportunities for 200 million children in India. They do this through the creation of and expanded access to digital public goods, serving the needs of learners, teachers, parents, and administrators, including the SunbirdⓇ set of digital public goods.  

Sunbird is a set of configurable, extendable, modular building blocks for learning and human development. They are designed for scale and open sourced under the MIT license. This digital infrastructure has already reached billions of people by providing vaccination certificates (Sunbird RC), through the education system (Sunbird ED), and much more. 

As part of their membership with the DPGA, EkStep Foundation will undertake the following activities: 

  1. Sunbird Bootcamp: Since Sunbird is adaptable, and can be used by any organisation including government, non-profit, or the private sector. EkStep will conduct bootcamps with ecosystem partners to enhance capacity and capabilities under the Sunbird portfolio of DPGs. 
  2. Maintain and grow the Sunbird portfolio: The Sunbird Community will continue to adopt, contribute, and grow open source digital building blocks under the Sunbird umbrella, making the results available to the DPGA community worldwide. This includes sharing learnings and best practices and showcasing use cases of Sunbird. 
  3. Experience centre and learning series: EkStep will host a series of physical and virtual meetings, events, and workshops targeted at those interested in understanding and using DPGs, with a focus on low- and middle-income country participation. 
  4. Growing the larger community: EkStep will also host a series of events for the DPG community specifically focused on building and growing communities linked to the DPG ecosystem, such as PeoplePlusAI.

Read more about EkStep’s contributions to the DPG ecosystem on their website.