Bangladesh slowly gets online through local ‘info ladies’ – in pictures

Info ladies cycle around remote villages in Bangladesh with laptops and cables, to bring internet access to locals
  
  


Info Ladies: helping Bangladeshi women with laptops and Internet connections, Bangladesh
‘Info ladies’ cycle to Saghata, a poor, remote farming village in Gaibandha district, 190km (120 miles) north of Dhaka in Bangladesh. These women travel to villages with laptops and internet connections, helping people – especially other women – get a range of services, including Skype chats and online medical advice. All photographs: AM Ahad/AP Photograph: A.M. Ahad/AP
Info Ladies: helping Bangladeshi women with laptops and Internet connections, Bangladesh
Sathi Akhtar, a 29-year-old Tattahakallayani, or info lady, shows a 15-minute video played on a laptop at a weekly meeting for local women in Saghata Photograph: A.M. Ahad/AP
Info Ladies: helping Bangladeshi women with laptops and Internet connections, Bangladesh
A group of Bangladeshi girls, aged between 12 and 17, hold a courtyard meeting in Saghata to learn about menstruation, reproductive health, HIV and Aids, and how to use contraceptives Photograph: A.M. Ahad/AP
Info Ladies: helping Bangladeshi women with laptops and Internet connections, Bangladesh
Shemoli Rani Das at a weekly meeting of an info lady and her clients at Saghata. An online session costs local people the equivalent to about $3 an hour, and the info ladies earn about $150 a month. To get set up, the info ladies take out a loan of about $650 Photograph: A.M. Ahad/AP
Info Ladies: helping Bangladeshi women with laptops and Internet connections, Bangladesh
Info lady Mehedi Akthar Misty, right, helps Amina Begum, 45, talk to her husband using Skype in Jharabarsha village, Gaibandha district. Begum had not seen a computer until a few years ago, but she now Skypes her husband regularly Photograph: A.M. Ahad/AP
Info Ladies: helping Bangladeshi women with laptops and Internet connections, Bangladesh
Info ladies, in their distinctive blue and pink uniforms, provide a vital service in a country where only 5 million of the population of more than 152 million people have internet access Photograph: A.M. Ahad/AP
 

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