Ngo in a Box -South Asia news and updates..

 

The eighth edition of NGO in a Box South Asia jointly organized by sarai CSDS and Mahiti Bangalore concluded successfully .The workshop was funded by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).

15 participants from in and around Delhi attended the workshop.Linux basics and ubuntu installation was covered along with hands on sessions on Open office,Gimp and Scribus.

Enabling indian language capability on computers was also a key focus of the workshop and participants were shown how to add fonts and enabling local language keyboard layouts.

Many participants got their laptops converted to a dual boot configuration with windows XP and Ubuntu.

An open source CMS called Plone was also covered and participants were given hands on training on uploading content to websites.

 Click here for  more pictures from the workshop.  Thanks to saurabh for taking pictures from his personal camera :)

Mahiti resource persons Rajeev and Balaji along with Kiran Sahi and Imogen Sahi of SANGAM conducted a basic computer course for higher secondary school teachers in Pudupattinam and Nagapattinam districts of Tamilnadu.The workshop was funded by DHL Logistics worldwide.

 

 A website dedicated to these schools http://netforschools.co.in  was demonstrated to the teachers  and they were also taught how to add their own content to the website .The website is developed using PLONE(www.plone.org),an easy to use Content Management System which makes it easy for people without any technical skills to add content of their own.The teachers managed to add a weblog entry and an event entry to the site as an exercise.Hopefully they will be able to add more of their content with future workshops

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 After the success of the previous Ngo in a Box Workshop at Madhya Pradesh,Sarai Delhi ,Mahiti  Bangalore and Nixi(National Internet Exchange of India) join hands to bring you  the eighth Ngo in a Box Workshop in the National Capital  Delhi.This workshop will have a strong emphasis on using free software tools to enhance the local language computing experience.Applications are being accepted now and seats are limited so hurry.For more information about the workshop and to apply , click here                                     

Mahiti conducted a 3 day workshop on open source at the center for women's development and research(CWDR),Chennai.

All of the 16 participants who attended were women,including field staff and computer faculty.Hands on training on open office and firefox was given along with installation of Ubuntu linux Operating system,an alternative to windows.

Some of the systems at the center were migrated to ubuntu linux in dual boot configuration.

It was a one day workshop where staff were given hands on training on open office and ubuntu installation.Some of the systems were migrated to ubuntu linux including some laptops.

 

 

The seventh Ngo in a Box workshop was held at Panchmarhi in Madhya Pradesh and was attended by around 30 participants.

 

This event was open for participants across india unlike previous events which were regional and most participants were from local or neighbouring states.

 

The sixth ngo in a box workshop was held at Jodhpur,Rajasthan and was attended by 12 participants from across the country.

The workshop was organized by mahiti bangalore in partnership with hivos and tactical tech.

 

 

 

The fifth NGO-in-a-box workshop that trains voluntary sector organisations in Free and Open Source Software was held from 26 - 30 May, 2008 in Guwahati, Assam. It was a 5 day long workshop and  participants from northeast states of Assam,  Meghalaya, Manipur,  Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim  attended the event. The workshop was  organised by Mahiti.org in partnership with the Tactical Technology Collective, Netherlands and supported by Hivos, Netherlands.

 

 

The fourth of a series of eight NGO-in-a-box workshops that train voluntary sector organisations in Free and Open Source Software was held in January 2008 in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. It was a 5 day long workshop and participants from Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab and Haryana attended the event. The workshops are being organised by Mahiti.org in partnership with the Tactical Technology Collective, Netherlands and supported by Hivos, Netherlands.

The third of a series of eight NGO-in-a-box workshops that train voluntary sector organisations in Free and Open Source Software was conducted in November 2007 in Orissa. It was a 5 day long workshop and 12 participants from Orissa, Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Bangladesh attended the event. The workshops are being organised by Mahiti.org in partnership with the Tactical Technology Collective, Netherlands and supported by Hivos, Netherlands.

The second NGO-in-a-Box workshop was held near Mysore from 25th to 29th June 2007. The workshop was open to participants from the voluntary sector from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.

 

 

The following set of tools was identified as being most relevant to the expectations of participants and aims of the workshop:

 

This is an event for experienced professionals actively working in advocacy NGOs, educational organisations, NGO resource centres, community centres and health information organisations in Western India.

All participants are required to be proficient desktop users of computers and to have some past experience of using technology in the voluntary sector.

Interested organisations are requested to nominate two candidates each for the workshop - one male and one female. Nominated candidates can apply by fill up their responses to the questions in the application form and send it in plain text format to ngoinabox@mahiti.org. As the workshop is restricted to a limited number, participants will be chosen on the basis of past work, area of expertise and potential to spread ideas to other NGOs.

The participants of the four workshops held in Pune, Mysore, Orissa and Dharamshala have begun experimenting with NGO-in-a-Box tools, replacing some of their proprietary software with free alternatives. Use of the mailing list and telephone support has been provided since the workshop, with Firefox being one of the tools most widely migrated to so far.

Mukesh of Family Planning Association India has dived right in! He successfully began using Mozilla Thunderbird in place of Microsoft Outlook, 7-Zip in place on WinZip, VLC in place of Windows Media Player and Firefox in place of Internet Explorer 7. Ridhi is hoping to teach a group of Mumbai slum dwellers free software based video editing. Meanwhile, John has discovered his organisation's broadband connection! Read the press release here.

The first Ngo in a Box workshop was held in Pune,Maharashtra in March 2007 and attended by participants from Goa,Gujarat and Maharashtra.