OneWorld South Asia held a five-day training programme for young people on computer applications and its effective usage in advocacy and communications at the rural level. The capacity building programme was held for the field functionaries of the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS), which is a body of Indian youth, at New Delhi from 18 22 December 2006.
The training programme, second in the series, was held under the project implemented by OneWorld South Asia (OWSA) - a Delhi based NGO and NYKS. The project envisage building Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) capacities of the field functionaries of the NYKS network and to engaged them in promoting community communication using the advances in Information and Communication Technologies.
The training programme was inaugurated by the Director General of NYKS and was attended by other senior managers both from NYKS and OWSA. 18 participants represented four northern states in the training.
The training covered aspects on using computers and Internet using vernacular language, and oriented participants on social issues and the role that ICTs could play in addressing to these issues at local community level.
The session on writing skills covered basic principles of good writing and appropriate formatting suitable for various media. Later in the workshop participants prepared their own group wise newsletter.
Session on open enrich enabled the participants to start using internet media to communicate to the local communities and global communities. They experienced the power of internet to run many community information services such as knowledge on health related issues, educational oppourtunities, local e-commerce, and even matrimonial services and weather information by managing their own community website powered by open enrich software developed jointly by OneWorld South Asia, National Informatics Centre and UNESCO.
Open enrich also enables the participants to network with other NYKS centres directly by using syndication features of the software that enables to share digital web contents of one centre with many centres simultaneously.
The session on photography and digital photo processing equipped the participants with skills to capture photographs around social issues and engage in local level advocacy using visuals. They also visited Sangam Vihar slums in Delhi to click photographs as part of their training assignment.
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Photograph by the trainee
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School children photographed by the trainee
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This projects targets to reach out to 165 NYKS centres across the country by March 2007. As expressed feedback of the participants of the second training, this training will take them a long way in bringing the benefits of ICTs to their villages.
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