Digital Inclusion

Advancing Digital Inclusion and Online Safety to Empower Communities and Transform Lives Launched in 2023, our Digital Inclusion for Marginalised Communities initiative continues to equip underserved populations across Bangladesh with essential digital skills and online safety awareness to improve livelihoods and expand access to opportunities. Implemented in partnership with Plan International Bangladesh and Telenor, the programme focuses on eight marginalised groups, with women and youth representing 68% of participants. In 2025, more than 224,000 people received training empowering individuals to learn, earn, and connect safely online. The endline survey reveals a powerful shift in everyday lives: daily internet usage increased signi­cantly, the use of digital platforms for education grew fourfold, digital birth registration became widely adopted and online income generation opportunities doubled among trained communities. Behind these numbers are stories of real transformation, stories like Bondona’s. Once digitally unconnected, Bondona hesitated even to use a smartphone. Today, she stands as a trusted local digital champion in her village, helping her community access government services online, from birth registrations to national ID applications, saving them time, travel, and money. Her impact reects a wider transformation captured in the programme’s endline survey ­ndings, where digital birth registration across trained areas surged from 0% to 79%. Bondona’s journey illustrates how digital inclusion creates ripple e‑ects empowering one individual who, in turn, empowers an entire community. Through knowledge and access, bene­ciaries are now enabling a safer, smarter, and more inclusive digital participation across Bangladesh.

Grameenphone believes that digital access must go hand in hand with digital safety. In partnership with UNICEF, we continue to build digital literacy and promote safe, responsible use of technology among children and youth, while strengthening teachers’ capacity. In 2025, we trained over 544,000 children and 13,000 teachers through engaging school-based programmes nationwide. A major milestone this year was taking online safety to tertiary education for the ­rst time, embedding cyber safety into ICT education, and introducing a mandatory cyber safety course for all ­rst-year National University students, marking a key step toward institutionalising online safety across Bangladesh

You can check the inspiring, life-changing stories shared by project beneficiaries serve as a testament to the transformative power of technology and the lasting impact.