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Recurrent droughts affect vast areas of South Asia, and are increasingly becoming a cause for concern. Information is the backbone of drought preparedness. In order to mitigate the ill effects of drought, there is an urgent need for sustained information, education and social mobilization efforts to reach vulnerable rural communities.

ICT mediated ODL methods are being used to enable extension functionaries to gather, store, retrieve and disseminate a broad range of information needed by farmers, thus transforming them from extension workers into knowledge workers. The emergence of such knowledge workers will result in the realization of the much talked about bottom-up, demand-driven technology generation, assessment, refinement and transfer.

In this paper, the authors present and discuss a case study conducted in a highly drought prone area, on how an Internet-connected rural access center (operated by a rural NGO) enabled training of rural youth in resource literacy, which in turn led to improved interactions between rural families and experts online. The study indicates that the ICT mediated ODL methods for rural families can bring a significant impact on extension practices, in drought-prone regions of South Asia.