The project, principally agreed upon by the varsity, envisages to open special study centres for women across the country in addition to the existing network of centres nationwide.

Highly placed IGNOU officials told The Indian Express that the ground work for implementation of the new policy has been completed and the entire blue print is under the final phase. After a final go-ahead, these centres will becomer functional from the next academic year.

Once these centres become operational, IGNOU will have the facility exclusively for the women. At present there are over 2 lakh students enrolled for various courses offered by the open varsity.

The highlight of the project will be the involvement of the women's educational institutes and varsities such as SNDT under the programme. The study centres will be set up under the existing complexes of the these institutions.

Pune is expected to be among the first few centres to launch the facility after working out its operational modalities.

IGNOU's regional centre in Pune, which caters to the entire State through its 15 study centres, is comtemplating to enroll SNDT university centres in Pune and Mumbai besides women educational institutions like Karve Stree Sikshan Sanstha for the project. At present there are over 8,000 students enrolled with the Pune regional centre for IGNOU courses.

Senior officials are also believed to be considering the possibility of seeking help of non-government organisation in running these centres and making distant learning popular among women, especially in rural areas.

One senior official at IGNOU said,``The emphasis of such centres will be to create more awareness about distance learning among the women. Besides the fact that the study centres will be housed in women's university and institutions, more number of women will be involved in the programme.''

The varsity's school of education has an exclusive `women's education unit' which has been entrusted with the responsibility of implementing the project of the Commonwealth Programme in Youth and Development through distance education.

The unit is also collaborating with the sociology faculty to develop programmes in the area of women's development and empowerment. The unit is focussing on developing training modules with participation of government agencies, NGOs and educational and training institutions.

The unit is now emphasising on training trainers to work with women's groups in areas such as entreprenership, credit and finance, marketing, organisation and the leadership, nutrition and health promotion, community resource management among others.