DICE — Digital Inclusion through CSO Empowerment (Mongolia)

Digital Inclusion through CSO Empowerment (DICE) is a European Union-funded programme run by People in Need Mongolia and the FARO Foundation, with the Mongolian Ministry of Digital Development and Communication, from December 2023 to May 2026 (30 months), targeting groups Mongolia's digital transformation has tended to bypass: older people, people with disabilities, rural women, herders and residents of landfill-adjacent peri-urban areas.

Rather than training citizens directly, DICE builds the capacity of civil-society organisations (CSOs) that are already trusted and embedded among these marginalised groups, so the CSOs themselves can deliver ongoing digital-literacy and advocacy work.

Sixty-five CSOs across peri-urban Ulaanbaatar and Umnugovi Province were trained in six modules aligned with Mongolia's national Digital Competence Framework for Citizens (foundational digital tools, cybersecurity, e-government services, content creation, digital collaboration and AI applications). Twenty-nine of those CSOs went on to receive sub-grants — roughly EUR 115,000 disbursed across two rounds — to run their own digital-literacy and advocacy activities.

The sub-granted activities reached about 1,830 people directly. An independent evaluation scored the programme 4.12 out of 5 overall, rating the CSO capacity-strengthening component 4.33/5 ("excellent"), with close to 82% of trained participants reporting a meaningful improvement in digital skills. Mongolia's state news agency, Montsame, separately reported that around 41 CSOs took part in the programme's later training round, corroborating the initiative independently of the implementing organisations' own account.

The evaluation was candid about limits: older participants needed more tailored, repeated training; smaller rural CSOs needed longer-term institutional support beyond the project's own timeline; and the resulting Inclusive Digitalisation Advocacy Roadmap still needs a clearer path from document to implementation.