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

A free software workshop was conducted in Kerala in association with vayali folk group www.vayali.org . Around 9 participants attended and those who attended included some research scholars,students,artists ,video and photographers.

Free software workshop held in Mumbai concluded successfully with 13 participants attending the workshop.

A broad range of topics were covered :

Free Software philosophy

Ubuntu installation

Open office and firefox

Creative commons

GImp image editing and inkscape vector graphics editor

Free cd's were distributed to all the participants and t shirts were given away.

A one day workshop was organized by NRC FOSS AU-KBC Research center on January 12th 2010

It was a presentation about how businesses can be built around the FOSS ecosystem.

Chethan Elvis,Marketing Director from Mahiti gave a presentation on Mahiti and its effective deployment of Free and Open Source solutions in business.

Other speakers who presented at the workshop :

 A quick overview of FOSS Technologies –

Siddharth Govindaraj, Silverstripes Software.

Managed Open Source delivered on the clouds-

Tarun Dua, E2ENetworks.

FOSS Ecosystem and role of NRCFOSS -

C N Krishnan, NRCFOSS, Anna University.

IT SME s and Open Source Technologies --

Ananth Seshan, ITSME Association.

Two workshops one at Almala , a 30 min drive from Latur at Vishvesharayya Politechnic, and one at Latur at MPBCA College.

We are pleased to announce our popular Free software workshop for NGO's , civil society and other marginalised communities NGO In A Box in the city of  Mumbai on January 11- 13 , 2009.

This workshop is being jointly conducted by Comet Media Foundation ,Mumbai and Mahiti ,Bangalore.

The workshop will cover the following broad topics :

• Introduction to Linux based distributions Fedora, Ubuntu.and installation

• Open Office Tools.

• Internet Tools (firefox, pidgin messenger).

• Gimp image editor,CMS, blogs,wikis.

• Audio/video editing tools (Audacity/kino)
• Google apps
• How to migrate successfully to open source software and get support online

In keeping with our sdp and fdp programme, we are pleased to announce our sdp at Vishwesharayya College Almala and  MPBCA College ,Maharshtra.

Topics will be as following:

1.Introduction to LInux

2.Ubuntu OS, usage, installation and applications

3.Getting support

4.Python basics with hands on lab sessions in afternoon

Mahiti conducted a teacher training programme at the Higher secondary school in Nagapatnam and Pudupatnam districts of tamilnadu.Siddhalingesh and kolappa gave the lessons.

Following were the topics covered ath the workshop:

Basic components of a computer

Internet basics and surfing the web

Emails

Open office document and spreadsheets www.openoffice.org

Language of delivery was Tamil.

Mahiti is conducting a teacher training programme for higher secondary school teachers in Nagapatnam girls higher secondary school and in Pudupatnam higher secondary school.

This is our second workshop at these schools and we aim to effectively deliver basic computer training to the teachers so they can in turn teach the students.

Topics we intend to cover:

• Basics about computers,Internet concepts
• Email,browsing,chat
• Blogging
• Netforschools website use
  

Workshop on Free and Open Source tools concluded succesfully in Chennai held from November 20 - 22 ,2009 .Workshop was attended by 20 participants from in and around Chennai.

This workshop was jointly conducted by Center for Women's development and Research,Chennai and Mahiti Bangalore

 Following topics were covered in the 3 day course.

• Introduction to Linux based distributions Fedora, Ubuntu.and installation

• Open Office Tools.

• Internet Tools (firefox, pidgin messenger).

• Gimp image editor,CMS, blogs,wikis.

• Audio/video editing tools (Audacity/kino)
• Google apps
• How to migrate successfully to open source software and get support online.
  

Center for Women's Development and Research,Chennai and Mahiti ,Bangalore are jointly announcing a Free and Open Source Workshop in Chennai from November 20 - 22 ,2009.

Those interested can apply from here http://ngoinabox.mahiti.org/apply

This is a 3 day non residential workshop for participants in and around Chennai.Outstation canditates have to tak e care of their own accomodation if they are interested in attending the workshop.

There is no registration fees to attend.Food will be provided at the venue.Participants have to bear their own travel costs.

Organizers: This  workshop is being organized jointly by CWDR,Chennai http://www.cwdr.org.in/ and Mahiti Infotech,Bangalore. http://www.mahiti.org

Participant profile: This event is geared towards NGOs and similar civil groups who have a need to migrate from proprietary software to open source alternatives.System integrators and consultants who provide IT support to NGO's are encouraged to participate.

The workshop will cover the following broad domains:

Free and Open Source Software:

• Introduction to Linux based distributions Fedora, Ubuntu.

• Open Office Tools.

• Internet Tools (firefox, pidgin, thunderbird).

• Gimp image editor, Web publishing(CMS, blogs).

• Audio/video editing tools (Audacity/kino)
  

Exact venue details will be sent to all confirmed applicants.

A FOSS Workshop was conducted at the National Institute of Engineering , Mysore on the 5th of October 2009.Topics covered were similar to the previous event at MIT.

- Introduction to FOSS: Concepts, history & philosophy
- The need of FOSS technologies in the academics
- Mahiti's educational platform
- FOSS education in real life social projects
- Project work: OurBank
- Intro to OurBank technolgies: MySQL, PhP, and Zend

Mahiti conducted a FOSS Workshop at MIT Mysore.The following topics were covered.

 - Introduction to FOSS: Concepts, history & philosophy
- The need of FOSS technologies in the academics
- Mahiti's educational platform
- FOSS education in real life social projects
- Project work: OurBank  ( www.ourbank.in )
- Intro to OurBank technolgies: MySQL, PhP, and Zend

A half a day ‘Student development Program’ was organized at ‘International School of Information Management’ on the issue of “Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)”. The talk/seminar was delivered by the group from Mahiti Infotech Pvt Ltd.

Ramya ,vishnu,bhavna ,kolappa and vijay attended the workshop .

More details can be found on the ISIM blog here

 http://isim-uom.blogspot.com/2009/12/foss-challenge.html

Mozilla foundation,the creators of the firefox web browser are organizing 'Mozilla Service Week' from September 14-21,2009 and Mahiti as part of its ongoing efforts to support the FOSS community  is pledging to help with the following:

Any non-profit in india which wishes to migrate to FOSS or interested in trying out alternative open source software will be provided support free of cost on phone,email and on location wherever required.

 Migration will cover the following:

• Migrating from non-linux based Operating systems to a linux based one(Ubuntu)
• Migration of email clients to mozilla thunderbird
• Migration to the Firefox web browser
  
• E-mail and hosting services like Google apps
  

We plegde a total of 200 man hours in total for this programme.

 Please contact us at ngoinabox@mahiti.org

or at our below listed numbers for any further information.

Mahiti Infotech Pvt. Ltd.

# 33-34, 2nd Floor,

Hennur Cross, Hennur Road,

Bangalore, India - 560043

Phone:  +91 80 4115 0580/1

Mobile:  +91 96113 44374

Mahiti conducted a training programme for students and faculty at PES engineering college ,Mandya on open source technologies .

Topics covered

1.PHP  (www.php.net)

2.MySql (www.mysql.com)

3.Python (www.python.org)

4.Zend framework  (www.zend.com)

Roughly 80 students from the information science,computer science and MCA streams attented the workshop.

Mahiti Infotech(www.mahiti.org) and The Institute of Engineers of India are proud to invite you at the seminar on

"The rise of Free and Open Source Software. Empowering the Educational and Social Sector with Information Technology."

Time: Saturday the 22nd of August 11 am - 1 pm
Location: SP Bhatt Hall, Institute of Engineers India Local Center, JLB Road, Mysore

Content:
- Intro to FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)
- The need of FOSS technology in the academics
- The need of FOSS technology in the non for profit sector
- OurBank, the IT FOSS solution for the Micro financing sector
- NGO in a box: the IT FOSS solution for NGO's
- How to apply an effective IT system in your organisation

Kindly find the invitation in attachment. For any question or enquiry, contact ravendenolf@mahiti.org

The 2nd computer training programme concluded successfully at CWDR's pondicherry center.All the participants were girls from nearby villages who were also students at the computer training center at cwdr.

They were already familiar with Microsoft office package and we got them working on FOSS alternative open office (www.openoffice.org)

Internals of a computer were also demonstrated and the students were very enthusiastic about looking into what goes on inside their computers.

Final day was a hands on session on the GIMP (www.gimp.org)

After successfully imparting computer training on FOSS tools at the Centre for Women's Development and Research,Chennai, Mahiti will be conducting a second workshop at the pondicherry center of CWDR.

As before,training will be given on basic IT usage,navigating the internet,audio and video,some blogging etc.

GOALS:

Engage FOSS into the academical field of IT engineering; 2) bring mahiti's projects (start with ourBank) to the academics inside and outside curriculum as 'project courses'.

TOPICS:
Understanding FOSS
Understanding the concept, history, philosophy, and global economic importance of FOSS; Understanding the need and importance of FOSS in academical field of IT engineering
Providing  FOSS learning for the teachers and students

Brief introduction about Mahiti Infotech focussing on projects we do and the Our Bank Project.

How will teachers and students gain FOSS expertise by participating in our projects (+ process flow and overall benefits)
Establishing the learning environment (self-learning, training, guidance and monitoring, providing practical experience in the framework of Mahiti's projects)

The rest of day 1 and day 2 we are going to have workshops on specific FOSSware (as Linux, PhP, Zend, Smarty, Joomla, Drupal, Google Gears, et cetera) here the teachers will be able to pick up a specific software as expertise. Mahiti will provide a wide range of workshops, and the faculty members can decide to participate in the workshops they wish for.

For more details about the event please contact :

 Ravendenolf@mahiti.org or call him. +91 9620591286

Downloads: 1.   Our Bank               2.  FOSS in academics

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 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: