News: Training & ICTs

A two-day training was held by VOICE on March 18th and 19th 2008 in Dhaka on information and communication technologies (ICTs). Online media and communication such as blogs and digital photography were expored. The creation, editing, optimisation and transferral of media for the web were of prime interest to the participants from non-profit organisations.

Ungana-Afrika, with the support of OSISA, is hosting a selection of free workshops that help leaders of non-profit organisational communities understand and implement new models of technology support and capacity-building. Upcoming workshops will take place in Windhoek, Namibia on 17-18 October 2007.

Launched on September 11 by Arnold Pietersen of the South African organisation CECS, the “Free knowledge for ICT literacy portal” will act as a guide for people who are looking for “the best information available on and for ICT training”. Pietersen’s enthusiastic launch took place at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in front of a small but highly stimulated audience attending the 2007 edition of the Highway Africa conference.

What happens when eight progressive information and communication technology organisations come together to share their expertise in computer and internet training in the so-called ‘developing world’? It results in ItrainOnline.

To address the current information and communication technologies capacity crisis most development organisations are facing, APC-member Ungana-Afrika will be expanding and strengthening the network of development sector oriented ICT consultants, eRiders, across the southern African region.

Soon after the launch of the CreativeCommons.org licensing programme for India, to the west, neighbouring Pakistan is working to get the same moving too. During a two-day workshop in Lahore, Pakistan, entitled "Towards an Open Information Society in Pakistan", issues of copyrights, intellectual property rights (IPR) and alternate forms of IPR were heavily discussed.

“ICTs play an increasingly important role in the day-to-day work of community radio producers,” states Karel Novotny at the ninth annual conference of AMARC. The World association of community radio broadcasters conference took place in Jordan’s capital city of Amman between November 11 and 17 2006. Novotny and colleagues of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) were there to contribute two workshops: one on community wireless networking and the other on the gender evaluation methodology (GEM). This article looks at the wireless efforts specifically.

APC-member Community Education Computer Society conducted a training in July 2006, as part of an e-readiness training for community radio stations. Among the "most important things" participants said they learnt were the the whole notion of free and open source software and the ability to broadcast radio over the internet.

The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), a network of civil society organisations working with ICTs and the internet for social justice and sustainable development thinks that the IGF is a valuable space for policy dialogue. As the first Internet Governance Forum that took place Athens in early November 2006 draws to a close, APC would like to insist on two issues be given priority: access to internet infrastructure and capacity building.

APC executive director Anriette Esterhuysen has told the Internet Governance Forum, meeting in Athens currently, that it has a duty play a much bigger role in spreading the sharing of ideas and encouraging innovation. Copyrighting and limiting the rights of teachers and learners in the developing world from share information would add only "limited value" to harnessing the internet for development, Esterhuysen said in the Greek capital.