Welcome to NGO-in-a-box, South Asia

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.

Indian social activists leverage free software: Read the full press release at http://www.indiaprwire.com/businessnews/20070516/22456.htm

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:

• Ubuntu Linux operating System

• Plone content management system

• Wordpress blog software

• Thunderbird mail client
• Media Wiki

• Open Office

• GIMP
  
• Scribus
• Inkscape
• Audio / Video
• Podcasting
• Security
  

When is NGO-in-a-box coming to my area?

Click here to find out. Please note that this is only a provisional timeframe. Subscribe to our mailing list to stay posted on the actual dates.

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 participants of the first workshop in Lonavala, near Pune, Maharastra 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 steadily increasing over the last few weeks 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 workshops will cover the following broad thematic areas:
1 - Base FOSS Applications: What to consider when migrating to open source, installation of a Linux operating system, commonly used Office and Internet packages.
2 – Open Publishing: Desktop publishing, image editing, web publishing and collaboration, content management.
3 – Audio Visual: Audio editing and distribution, CD burning and ripping, media capture, audio visual playing tools.
4 - Security: Internet security, passwords, data storage and backup, communication and encryption

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.