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The challenges of our AI epoch can be addressed only by strengthening human capabilities for both critical thinking and compassion. Yet, a spate of studies from across the world suggests that the applications of AI have led to higher vulnerability for the marginalized, alienation of young people, and, in general, a decline in cognitive abilities. Numerous articles have raised concerns about the unethical and extreme consequences of people’s relationships with AI bots and about AI agents that take over human autonomy. The economy powering AI dystopia is not just profiteering wildly. It is stripping society of historical memory, institutional authority, and social sensibility.

For those who feel that “the AI epoch is here and we can do nothing but accept it”, Neil Postman’s fifth law of technology – that ‘technology becomes mythic’ is a warning. Unless social institutions retain the sovereign right to determine our futures, the current configuration of techno-social design–monopolized by Big Tech corporations–is bound to hurt future generations. The ‘export data, import AI’ paradigm takes us back to the ‘export cotton, import cloth’ era that impoverished India, a colony of the British. The new paradigm is not merely one of squeezing the AI colonies economically, but also politically. It is a new enslavement nudged algorithmically through trade deals and political bargains based on self-interest of the powerful.

Over the past year, we deepened our engagement in advancing policy and public narratives of digital justice through close collaboration with our allies and partners. We held firm on the rights and justice agenda in global digital governance debates. Through participation in transnational networks, we amplified Global South perspectives and expanded the global conversation on digital economies in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).

Our approach positions the Majority World not as a mere market for digital services from the Global North, but as an equal partner in shaping digital economies that are fair, inclusive, and sustainable.

Our targeted advocacy over the past year translated Southern priorities into tangible gains in the global digital governance discourse. Through the Global Digital Justice Forum (GDJF)—an international civil society network we co-founded to advance the digital justice agenda—we successfully brought a Southern perspective into the negotiations around the Global Digital Compact (GDC). The GDC is a global framework for digital cooperation and artificial intelligence adopted by the United Nations in September 2024.

In the lead-up to the Compact, we influenced debates on its text through strategic side events, formal submissions, periodic analyses of draft versions to inform civil society positions, and participation in public consultations. We were also invited by the Diplo Foundation to be a part of their expert team and conduct training sessions for UN Permanent Mission representatives—particularly from the Majority World—on key digital political economy issues within the GDC.

These sustained advocacy efforts secured concrete victories for a Southern vision of digital justice, especially in advancing the enforcement of human rights across the technological lifecycle.

The finalized GDC text explicitly recognizes the need to uphold human rights throughout the entire lifecycle of digital technologies—from pre-design to decommissioning—positioning every stage of technology as a space for accountability and rights protection.

Thanks to our consistent emphasis, the initial draft—which lacked any reference to ‘equity’ in the digital economy—was revised to include explicit language on equity. This ensured that an equitable digital economy and society remained central to the conversation in the final GDC text.

In early 2025, in acknowledgment of our critical position and trusted expertise in the digital justice sector, our Executive Director, Anita Gurumurthy, was invited to join the Working Group as the Civil Society representative. Operating under the mandate of the UN Global Digital Compact, the Group is set to produce policy recommendations on data governance for development to present to the UN General Assembly in 2026, reinforcing our prominent role in shaping global norms for equitable and inclusive data governance.

We played a crucial role in bringing a political economy lens to AI governance debates, moving beyond a focus on responsible design to addressing economic concentration and the entrenchment of inequality in the current arc of data and AI innovation. In international digital governance spaces—including the UN Science Summit and UNESCO’s Consultation Paper on AI Regulation—we outlined novel approaches for governing AI innovation. As part of the UN Envoy on Technology’s AI Opportunity Scan, we contributed an analysis mapping both the promises and risks of AI for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Our interventions in these spaces have emphasized the need to proactively shape the future trajectories of AI innovation for equitable benefit sharing through an enabling policy environment. We have also joined networks and coalitions addressing monopoly power in the data and AI economy. As a member of the global civil society network Digital Merger Watch, we co-lead the AI Partnerships Working Group, examining how the close ties between AI startups and Big Tech foreclose the possibility of a level playing field for democratic AI innovation.

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has emerged as an alternative to privately controlled digital ecosystems, gaining traction among policymakers and civil society alike. Over the past year, we critically analyzed DPI developments to identify pathways for inclusive, equitable, and rights-centered DPI that contribute to public value creation.

In partnership with the University of Western Australia (UWA), we conducted sectoral research on building flourishing DPI-enabled innovation ecosystems in healthcare, agriculture, and urban mobility. Our report, ‘Recovering the Public in India’s Digital Public Infrastructure Strategy,’ presents insights from this research on shaping DPI ecosystems for social good innovation. We shared these insights with officials from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, through a roundtable on inclusive digital transformation co-organized with Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research (SAFAR), bringing together civil society actors, technology experts, and government representatives to evaluate pathways to strengthening DPI’s strategy, particularly in the public welfare system.

We have been deeply concerned about Big Tech’s monopolistic grip and its growing sway over political systems worldwide. In 2025, we rallied global civil society to sound the alarm on this crisis, calling out the US-led broligarchy and techno-fascism reshaping governance and digital economies. Through this effort, we amplified Majority World voices and built a united front to challenge the corporate takeover of our digital and political futures.

In February 2025, together with partners from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) in Africa and the Global Digital Justice Forum, we organized a civil society strategy convening in South Africa. The meeting brought together 25 activists to shape a people-centered vision of digital governance. A key outcome of the convening was the Johannesburg Communiqué—a civil society appeal urging governments and international organizations to adopt and enforce policies that curb the monopolistic and extractive powers of corporations, protect individual and collective freedoms, and guarantee the rights of nature. Translated into 11 languages and endorsed by over 150 organizations and individuals worldwide, the communiqué demonstrated the strong global resonance of our campaign messaging.

To advance our people-centered and Global South–driven vision of data justice, we recognized the need to build cross-sectoral alliances that ground these debates in specific contexts and the lived realities of communities worldwide.

To this end, we established a civil society working group to generate evidence on pathways for placing equity and justice at the forefront of data governance debates across public health, biodiversity, food sovereignty, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Our partner organizations in this effort—Open Knowledge Foundation, Third World Network, FIAN International, People’s Health Movement, and ETC Group—bring deep, domain-specific expertise to these issues.

Through a series of consultations, workshops, and feedback mechanisms, we provided strategic leadership to connect these case studies to digital governance frameworks and build forward-looking, sector-specific data imaginaries rooted in real-world experiences. Members of the network also participated in a briefing for the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to share emerging evidence on the intersections between data injustice and human rights violations.

Building toward the International Labour Conference (ILC) scheduled for June 2025, we are advocating to center workers’ rights in the platform economy. For the first time, the Conference of governments, platform companies, and workers is set to discuss a global instrument to enshrine decent work in the platform economy.

In the lead-up to the ILC, we have partnered with a range of civil society and worker organizations—including trade union federations, think tanks, and philanthropies—to ramp up advocacy for meaningful guarantees of workers’ rights, particularly data rights and freedom from algorithmic (mis)management.

Our partners included the Gig and Platform Service Workers’ Union (a women-led union from India), UNIA (a Switzerland-based trade union), and a coalition of civil society organizations, the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, Equidem, Action Center on Race and the Economy, IRIS, PowerSwitch Action, the Centre for Law and Transformative Change, and The Worker Agency. We are also providing advisory support to Public Services International for submissions and feedback on the ILO’s framing reports ahead of the Conference.

In 2024–25, we undertook a range of initiatives to strengthen the capacity of civil society actors to respond effectively to the challenges posed by Big Tech–driven digitalization to social justice and equitable development in their sectors and regions.

In August 2024, Public Services International invited us to conduct a session on digital trade and labor rights at a workshop in Manila for over 30 trade unions in Southeast Asia focused on trade justice. In the same month, we successfully launched the second cohort of the National Gender Fellowship Program, supported by the European Union and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. This year-long capacity-building program aims to deepen scholarship in the emerging field of gender studies of the digital economy by mentoring early-career women scholars in India. We selected and supported 10 fellows out of 250+ applications received. The program began with a two-day training to develop fellows’ understanding of feminist research methodologies and critical digital studies, followed by guidance in developing their research proposals. Fellows are conducting research on a range of topics, including digitalization in nursing, domestic work and digital platforms, transgender experiences online, and social media entrepreneurship—demonstrating the diversity of scholarship the program enables.

Our flagship institute, Frontiers and Frames for a New Digitality, returned for its second edition, bringing together over 20 participants for five days of immersive workshops, exercises, and panel presentations on Southern digital justice. We also supported the pedagogical initiatives of our partner organizations, including the Digital Capitalism course offered by the Transnational Institute. Advancing our mission to decolonize knowledge in the digital sphere, our leadership led capacity-building and knowledge-exchange activities through masterclasses that explored the rise of digital capitalism, its societal impacts, and strategies for imagining alternative digital futures.

Through these efforts over the past year, we accelerated the building of Southern solidarity and strengthened civic capacity to shape digital governance trajectories for equity and social justice.

We firmly believe that movements for digital justice must not only critique extractive digital superstructures but also cultivate feminist alternatives. Through research, policy advocacy, and capacity-building initiatives, we are advancing feminist imaginaries of the digital economy while strengthening institutional frameworks to put these principles into practice. This commitment was recognized when our Executive Director, Anita Gurumurthy, received the prestigious UNFPA@50 Special Laadli Award for Advocacy to Bridge the Digital Gender Divide — affirming our leadership in driving an inclusive and rights-centered digital ecosystem in India.

A critical aspect of our work has been pushing the gender analysis of AI systems beyond narrow technical frames, such as de-biasing and techno-design for gender equality and diversity. Our feminist analysis unpacks how algorithms in digital capitalism actively mobilize gender differences, while demonstrating pathways towards a feminist commons to secure freedoms for women and other historically marginalized groups.

We advanced this analysis through a crucial policy contribution; the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence’s (GPAI) report,‘ Towards Substantive Equality in Artificial Intelligence: Transformative AI Policy for Gender Equality and Diversity’, launched in November 2024. The report applies the substantive equality framework of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and other human rights instruments to offer concrete policy recommendations for fostering inclusive and democratic innovation.

In March 2025, at the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) review of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing+30) in New York, we successfully presented a four-point agenda for gender equality in the platform economy. This agenda was developed through regional consultations across Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe, and Latin America with more than 50 researchers, trade unionists, cooperatives, academics, and civil society activists.

These discussions underscored the importance of guaranteeing foundational rights and principles at work for all women platform workers, designing gender-responsive social protection frameworks for platform work, and advancing a data rights agenda suited to a gender-equal world of work. They also emphasized the need for a new international labor standard for automated work management systems grounded in a gendered approach to privacy, personal data protection, and the elimination of algorithmic discrimination.

As part of our ongoing project supported by the European Union and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (2020–25), we partnered with LabourNet to develop a social enterprise–managed labor platform model for beauty workers in the urban services sector. Through this knowledge partnership, we created a techno-design blueprint for a subscription-based social enterprise platform that onboards both workers and clients only after verification and is committed to creating a fair labor marketplace.

The platform’s architecture, designed through extensive consultations with beauty workers, is grounded in worker-centric design principles. Key features include self-managed workflows, task assignments aligned with workers’ preferred schedules and specializations, enhanced safety mechanisms such as client verification before onboarding, and robust support and feedback loops for grievance redressal.

We also collaborated with Vrutti and the SEWA Cooperative Federation to create effective data stewardship mechanisms for sustainable livelihoods. Insights from this work are being compiled into techno-design blueprints to guide other social enterprises and cooperative organizations in India to leverage platform, data, and AI technologies for empowering women workers.

At the International Cooperative Alliance Global Cooperative Conference in New Delhi, we presented our work on cooperative-led digital governance, highlighting the importance of equitable data governance principles through participatory, ground-up processes.

These interventions reaffirm that “small-is-beautiful” models of platform and data innovation—rooted in local realities—are both possible and sustainable when supported by dedicated financing and strong institutional frameworks.

As our field center in Mysuru, Prakriye expands its network of community information centers, Namma Mahiti Kendras (NMKs) across villages, Hagaranalli village has emerged as a powerful example of women-led digital transformation. These information centers represent far more than internet access points. They serve as transformative spaces where marginalized rural women and girls access crucial information on government schemes, welfare programs, education, and employment opportunities. Women engage in discussions, receive digital literacy training, and get timely updates through IVRS messages, while girls explore media and storytelling. The centers empower women and girls to experiment with technology on their own terms.

We establish each center by identifying villages where women’s collectives are ready to own and manage these resources. In Hagaranalli, women demonstrated this potential by uniting to challenge village leaders’ refusal to allocate a community building for the center. They strategically highlighted the NMK’s value as a community resource and successfully secured an unused panchayat building. Their journey tested their resolve at every turn—from battling bureaucracy for electricity connections to securing resources for painting the building.

Through our work in Karnataka, we are reimagining education by placing teachers at the center of a people-driven, technology-enabled approach. Our initiatives strengthen teacher capacity, promote inclusive classrooms, and show how digital tools can advance equitable learning. By integrating audio-story pedagogy, hands-on training, and contextualized digital resources, we enable educators to create transformative learning experiences—from making language education more engaging to helping adolescents navigate digital risks, social pressures, and patriarchal norms. In rural contexts, we support teachers in demystifying technology’s creative potential, using it as a tool for critical thinking, confidence, and social change.

We challenge conventional narratives by leveraging audio-story pedagogy, which mirrors the natural ways children acquire language—through meaning, emotion, and context. Audio stories use sound effects and voice modulation to help students infer meaning and connect with their home language, strengthening comprehension and communication skills essential for lifelong learning.

Karnataka, one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse states in India, provides schooling in multiple language mediums beyond Kannada, including English, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Urdu. While offering instruction in multiple languages is an important step, students and teachers face significant challenges. A major hurdle is the gap between the language children speak at home and the language used in school. For example, in Tamil- and Urdu-medium schools, teaching is conducted in formal Tamil or Urdu, while students often speak Tamil dialects or Dakhni at home. For these students, linguistic diversity often translates into exclusion.

When instruction does not account for a child’s home language and culture, it imposes a cognitive toll, as children struggle to decode the language while learning content, and an emotional toll, as children begin to associate their mother tongue with “backwardness,” leading to disengagement and reduced confidence in their own learning abilities.

Through the Kathe Khajane program, in partnership with the Karnataka Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT), teachers received hands-on support to record, edit, and publish audio stories. This year, the program expanded to Tamil and Telugu, delivering contextualized, engaging resources across all language mediums in government schools. Developed with and for teachers, these audio stories became practical, classroom-ready tools that spark curiosity, strengthen listening and speaking skills, and reintegrate storytelling into education.

A Tamil-medium teacher highlighted the impact of the program:

“The workshop was very useful, because so far, we don’t have any collection or archive of Tamil stories we can use. Teaching them in Tamil, in their mother tongue, will impact them better. This year, we are looking forward to combining all these stories we have recorded with our lessons, and using them effectively for our students”.

The Language Education through Audio Story-Based Pedagogy, Karnataka (K-LEAP) program made significant strides in empowering teachers to harness the transformative potential of audio stories in language learning. Through a two-pronged approach—resource creation and techno-pedagogical capacity building—the program cultivated holistic teacher development and strengthened classroom practices by integrating technology meaningfully into pedagogy.

Building on previous efforts, this year the program expanded its scope: launching the teacher resource Kathe Khajane, introducing educators to techno-pedagogical frameworks such as Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and observing teachers demonstrate creativity and understanding in applying these approaches in their classrooms. Teachers collaborated to produce over 450 audio stories, now available as Open Educational Resources (OER) on the free and open-source mobile app AntennaPod. Offline accessibility via teachers’ phones ensures that even schools with limited resources and connectivity can use these high-quality, contextually relevant learning tools and resources.

Teachers began applying these techniques in classrooms, reporting enhanced student engagement, confidence, and language skills. In Bengaluru North district, targeted follow-up with Urdu-medium teachers demonstrated not only adoption of resources and strategies but also active peer learning and sharing through a community of practice. The program also facilitated techno-pedagogy workshops across six districts, engaging language teachers, Cluster Resource Persons, and Block Resource Persons. Workshops combined immersive demonstrations, discussions, and hands-on activities, and were tailored to address language-specific and context-specific learning challenges in English, Kannada, Urdu, and Marathi.

Teachers explored questions such as:

How can storytelling enhance language acquisition and development?
How can digital technologies be creatively integrated for storytelling?
What strategies can link stories, technology, and learning in low-resource classrooms?
What are common myths and challenges in language teaching and learning?

One teacher, Nikhatul Ain, Udru HPS, shared her experience:

“It is a completely new experience for us. Children get lost in their imaginative world. Whenever they listen to a story, they express their thoughts, and their thinking power increases. After listening to many stories, we saw that even those children who weren't able to speak at all or used to hesitate to speak would also happily respond without hesitation when asked questions about the story. They would come forward to speak about the story.

I used a story, Hakim Sahib ki Hichkiyan, relating it to a textbook story. I made them listen to the story and enact it. The children prepared a very nice skit within 5 minutes. One child became the Hakim Sahib by putting on a beard made out of cotton. Children went around the school and picked up small leaves and twigs to depict the preparation of natural medicines and remedies. It was a very humorous story, and they enjoyed themselves acting it out. Through this activity, there was a fresh enthusiasm born in the children. Even when we don't have electricity, we can do such activities because we only need our phones and a Bluetooth speaker”.

Our project, Hosa Hejje Hosa Dishe (New Steps, New Direction), expanded to nearly 500 schools across four districts in Karnataka this year, empowering adolescents to navigate online risks, patriarchal norms, and social pressures, including child marriage and digital addiction. At a time when young people face overwhelming online content and rampant misinformation, the project provides structured support to strengthen adolescent development.

Baseline and endline surveys of 580 girls from residential and non-residential schools across Kalaburagi, Mysuru, Raichuru, and Chamarajanagara show significant shifts in attitudes. After the intervention, 67% of girls recognize how psychological, intellectual, and physical changes shape their adolescence. About 78% now reject traditional gender roles in household responsibilities, 72% challenge stereotypical beauty standards, and 75% take active control over their life choices and careers rather than relying solely on their circumstances.

The project delivers impact through three core interventions. Kishori Clubs create teacher-facilitated safe spaces in schools for girls to discuss concerns and build confidence; Kishori Adda, our Instagram handle, counters toxic online content, reaching adolescents where they are already active; and Kishori Labs enable direct engagement in select schools for continuous learning and feedback. These efforts are reinforced with IVRS messages, podcasts, and MOOCs, extending learning beyond the classroom.

The intervention has gained recognition from the Department of School Education and Literacy, Karnataka. Government officials now mobilize teachers and principals to integrate Kishori Club activities into their schools, signaling progress toward systemic adoption. Teachers report that students who previously hesitated to speak now actively participate in discussions about their futures. In schools where the program operates, conversations about gender roles, career aspirations, and personal agency have become part of the everyday dialogue.

Residential Institute on Frontiers and Frames for a New Digitality

4 March - 9 March 2025

Earlier this year, we hosted the second edition of our residential institute in Bali, Indonesia, supported by the Fair, Green and Global Alliance. The week-long program brought together 20 emerging civil society leaders from the Global South to critically analyze the political economy of the digital, interrogate the implications of platformization and AI, and chart collective pathways for action.

The institute deepened cross-regional solidarity, strengthened movement-building, and advanced feminist and justice-centered approaches to digital transformation—reinforcing our commitment to shaping a people-first digital future.

WSIS and Beyond: Building a Civil Society Digital Justice Strategy

10 - 11 February 2025

To strengthen civil society coordination for the WSIS+20 review, we co-organized a strategic meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, with partners from the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) in Africa, the Global Digital Justice Forum, and Emancipatory Futures Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. The meeting brought together over 25 participants to develop advocacy strategies for the WSIS+20 process and intersecting global development agendas.

Participants advanced a multi-issue political strategy for digital justice, focusing on financing for digital infrastructure, communication rights, ecological transition, gender equity, and corporate accountability—laying the groundwork for coordinated civil society action ahead of the Financing for Development conference.

Inclusive Digital Transformation: The DPI Approach and Beyond

10 January 2025

In partnership with Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) and the Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research (SAFAR), we co-hosted a roundtable in Bengaluru to critically examine the ethics, design, and governance of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Supported by the European Union, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Australia, and the Fair, Green and Global Alliance, the roundtable convened civil society leaders, technologists, and policymakers to reflect on India’s DPI trajectory and address emerging governance challenges.

We also launched our policy brief, ‘Recovering the ‘Public’ in India’s Digital Public Infrastructure Strategy’, highlighting the need to center accountability, inclusivity, and public interest in DPI frameworks.

Internet Governance Forum 2024

15-19 December 2024

We brought a strong feminist and Global South perspective to the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) 2024 in Riyadh, engaging across high-level policy spaces and multistakeholder dialogues. Our team participated in and moderated nine hybrid sessions, advancing discussions on platform regulation, AI governance, data justice, gender equality, and digital public infrastructure.

Key highlights included co-organizing the Day 0 event, ‘Fit-for-future? A Visioning Exercise on Digital Cooperation’, and contributing to sessions hosted by UN Women, UNESCO, and the Policy Network on AI. Our engagement amplified calls for inclusive, accountable, and justice-oriented global digital governance.

UN Consultation on Usage of AI in Education

Our Executive Director, Gurumurthy Kasinathan, joined an expert consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education to inform the upcoming report to the UN General Assembly on a human rights-based approach to AI in education.

He presented Kerala’s Public EdTech Model as a global exemplar of a democratic, state-led alternative to privatized, Big Tech–driven education systems—underscoring the importance of equity, transparency, and public accountability in EdTech governance.

CIES 2025 Annual Conference: Envisioning Education in a Digital Society, Chicago

At the 69th Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) in Chicago, Marzia Ibrahim co-facilitated a workshop titled ‘Harnessing ICTs to Improve Equity in Teacher Professional Learning Systems’, alongside ETI partners. She showcased IT for Change’s findings on how Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open Educational Resources (OER) strengthen teacher agency and democratize access to professional learning opportunities at scale.

TPD@Scale Global Meeting, Hanoi, Vietnam

Our colleagues Marzia Ibrahim and Gurumurthy Kasinathan represented IT for Change at the Second Global Meeting of the Empowering Teachers Initiative (ETI) in Hanoi, Vietnam. The convening explored strategies to scale teacher professional development (TPD) through EdTech in the Global South. They presented our ongoing action research project with minority community schools in Bangalore North, demonstrating how the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework enables context-driven, scalable, and equitable teacher professional development.

CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS (CSOs)

National

Arghyam

ASHA

Bharatiya Krishak Samaj

Breakthrough India

Credit Consultant Association Of India

Digital Empowerment Foundation

Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relation

Internet Freedom Foundation

Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan

Public Health Research Institute of India

Software Freedom Law Center

Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research

Tattle Civic Technologies

Asia-Pacific

Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication

Focus on the Global South

IBON International

EngageMedia

Just Economy and Labor Institute

Khazanah Research Institute

Konfederasi Pergerakan Rakyat Indonesia

Lirne Asia

Samdhana Institute

Third World Network

UWA Tech and Policy Lab, University of Western Australia

Vietnam Organization for Gender Equality

Africa & MENA

Africa Open Data and Internet Research Foundation

AfronomicsLaw Forum

Arab NGO Network for Development

Media and Gender Enlightenment Initiative

Pollicy

Research ICT Africa

Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute

Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

North America

Centre for Innovation and Governance

Drivers Cooperative

Public Citizen

Europe

Tricontinental Centre

Clean Clothes Campaign

DiploFoundation

Distributed AI Research Institute (Data Workers’ Inquiry)

Food First Information and Action Network

Groupe de Recherche Pour Une Stratégie Économique Alternative

Nexus Research Cooperative

The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations

Transnational Institute

Whynot Lab

Latin America

Data Impacta

Data Privacy Brazil

Derechos Digitales

Equidad

Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor

Instituto de Estudios Ecuatorianos

InternetLab

Latin American Information Agency

Mora Research Institute

Rhizomatica

Social Watch

Global

Association for Progressive Communications

Civil Society Group on Financing for Development

Commonwealth of Learning

CONCORD Europe

ETC Group

FIAN International

Forum on Information and Democracy

Gender & Technology Institute

Global Digital Inclusion Partnership

GRAIN

MediaLab

Open Knowledge Foundation

Oxfam International

People’s Health Movement

World Association for Christian Communication Global

UNION FEDERATIONS

GOVERNMENTS, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES AND MULTILATERAL AGENCIES

PRIVATE SECTOR ENTITIES

DONOR AGENCIES, FOUNDATIONS AND PHILANTHROPIES

ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS

Global Trade Justice Network

Joint Action Committee Against Foreign Retail and E-commerce

Just Net Coalition

Make Amazon Pay

National Coalition on Education Emergency

OECD Watch

Our World Is Not For Sale

People’s Working Group on Multistakeholderism

Platform Cooperativism Consortium

Platform Governance Research Network

Right Digitalisation Network

Right To Education Forum

Transform Health Coalition

UNESCO Internet for Trust Knowledge Community

Women’s Rights Online Network

World Wide Web Foundation

BALANCE SHEET AS ON 31 MARCH 2025

All amounts are in INR

2023-24	Liabilities	2024-25	% of total	2023-24	Assets	2024-25	% of total
50,342,308	Organisation Stabilization Fund	22,276,465	11	2,118,207	Fixed Assets	47,954,083	24
579,203	Corpus Donation	869,369	0	0	Non Current Assets	10,223	0
31,985,424	General Fund	33,347,915	16	165,729,804	Current Assets, Loans and Advances	152,688,193	75
2,406,320	Asset Fund	47,954,083	23	1,166,256	Receivables	2,132,411	1
77,166,159	Advance Account	95,700,766	47
6,534,851	Sundry Payables	2,636,311	1
169,014,266	Total	202,784,910	100	169,014,266	Total	202,784,910	100

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

All amounts are in INR

2023-24	Expenditure	2024-25	% of total	2023-24	Income	2024-25	% of total
48,990,735	Personnel Costs	56,883,389	64	67,428,185	Funds Received	74,490,962	83
14,207,475	Operating Costs	13,525,856	15	10,253,208	Interest on Term Deposit & Savings Bank Account	10,292,112	12
5,046,625	Administration Costs	4,081,717	4	971,095	Income to the extent of Depreciation transferred from Asset fund	869,481	1
971,095	Depreciation	869,481	1	10,600	Withdrawal from Asset Fund	0	0
5,503,841	Excess of Income over Expenditure	6,974,307	8	153,026	Donation	0	0
5,503,841	Appropriation towards Organizational Expenses	6,974,307	8	1,407,498	Professional Fee and Other Income	1,637,502	2
				0	Write back of provisions no longer required	2,019,000	2
80,223,612	Total	89,309,057	100	80,223,612	Total	89,309,057	100

2024-2025

IT for Change Annual Report

2024-2025

Table of Contents

About the Organization

A Note from the Directors

Our Impact

1

Shaping the Global Discourse on Just Digital Economies

We advanced a Southern vision of digital justice in the UN Global Digital Compact negotiations

We are leading from the front in shaping the future of global data governance at the UN CSTD

We infused a political economy lens into global AI governance debates

We developed a robust framework for Digital Public Infrastructure grounded in public value principles

2

Strengthening Solidarity in the Digital Justice Movement

We galvanized civil society for a global campaign on tackling tech broligarchy

We forged a civil society working group to center equity and justice in global data governance

We joined hands with civil society & trade union movements and promoted a decent work agenda at the ILO

We built civil society capacities to respond to the new challenges for equity and social justice in a digitalizing world

3

Nurturing Feminist Digital Imaginaries

We introduced fresh perspectives to the debate on diversity, equity, and inclusion in AI systems

We brought evidence of women gig workers’ extreme precarity to the Beijing+30 review process

We demonstrated platform pathways for women’s economic empowerment

We championed women-led digital transformation in rural digital Karnataka

4

Transforming Public Education through Teacher-Led EdTech

We transformed language learning through audio stories

We built teacher capacity and advanced tech-enabled pedagogy

We equipped schools to empower adolescents against digital risks and social pressures

Thematic Highlights

The IT for Change Social Report

Testimonials

Event Highlights

Residential Institute on Frontiers and Frames for a New Digitality

4 March - 9 March 2025

WSIS and Beyond: Building a Civil Society Digital Justice Strategy

10 - 11 February 2025

Inclusive Digital Transformation: The DPI Approach and Beyond

10 January 2025

Internet Governance Forum 2024

15-19 December 2024

UN Consultation on Usage of AI in Education

CIES 2025 Annual Conference: Envisioning Education in a Digital Society, Chicago

TPD@Scale Global Meeting, Hanoi, Vietnam

Collaboration Footprint

Networks

Projects & Publications

The Essential IT for Change Resource List: 2024-25

RESEARCH OUTPUTS

POLICY BRIEFS

POLICY BRIEFS (CONTINUED)

BOOK CHAPTERS

MEDIA ARTICLES

JOURNAL ARTICLES

FROM THE DATASYN VAULT

PODCASTS

Projects List

Annexures

Events

Publications

Financial Statements

BALANCE SHEET AS ON 31 MARCH 2025

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT FOR YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2025

IT for Change
Annual Report