NF’s community-centric initiative is designed to engage industry, civil society and governments in synergistic interventions through partnership. Called the NASSCOM Knowledge Network (NKN), it is envisaged as an independent, disaggregated model with the contribution made by every partner (Resource, Implementation, Connectivity and NF) being vital to the Network. NF’s multifaceted program leverages on the power of partnerships and brings together donors, content providers and implementing agencies, thus enabling grassroot organizations to start successful ICT projects. The design puts the needs of the community that the knowledge center serves first and is therefore implemented using a bottom-up, non-prescriptive approach.

NF chose the community-based model for the NKN programme. The NF team felt that the needs of the community must be put foremost and therefore a bottom-up approach was put in place. NF’s other major concern was the issue of sustainability. This was reinforced by Rafiq Dossani and D. C. Mishra’s report “Enabling ICT for Rural India” (November 2005) which said, “…despite high user interest, availability and affordability of relevant content and information network remain major problems. As a result most projects are not financially viable and have not met user or provider expectations on content or usage.”
NF’s programme approach is therefore based on the following recommendations of the Dossani-Misra report: