By FMA MANILA, Philippines,
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As part of its civil society capacity-building programme called Connecting Development Organizations, Technology and Society (CONNECT the D.O.T.S.) APC member Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA), organised a successful information and communication technology training workshop for Philippine independent organisations and social movements between the 14th and 17th of June 2006 at the National Computer Center in Quezon City.
The training-workshop aimed to raise civil society organisations’ (CSOs) awareness of the available online resources which could effectively enhance their advocacies and increase the level of collaboration within their organisations and networks, while at the same time make them more conscious of the concomitant risks and threats in the use of computers and digital communication.
“I gained a deeper appreciation of the importance of security in ICTs… I was also inspired to enhance our online communication system with some tools presented here,” declared the executive director of a migrants advocacy NGO.
The activity consisted of two modules: The first one, called “Online Tools for Collaboration & Advocacy”,k dealt with collaboration and advocacy tools such as mailing lists, content management systems, blogs, wikis, polling, SMS, VOIP, and instant messaging. The second module, “Secure Computing & Online Communications”, covered the tools and mechanisms such as firewalls, anti-virus and anti-adware/spyware programmes, encryption tools, and web anonymizers, among others. Almost all of the applications presented were created using free and open source software (FOSS), in line with FMA’s FOSS advocacy, and utilised popular resources from such APC material as ItrainOnline and Secure NGO-in-a-Box.
This being the Philippines, a learning sub-unit on the use of mobile telephony—particularly SMS/texting—was also organised with a panel of speakers from wireless application service providers (Veritas Mobile and Chikka Asia), as well as non governmental organizations (NGOs) experimenting with SMS-based advocacy, such as the WomensHub partner Center of Migrant Advocacy (CMA), for migrants crisis alerts; the Network of Citizens for Honest Elections and Truthful Statistics (NO CHEATS), for reporting of precinct-level electoral returns; and FMA’s own Tambuli Text (SMS broadcast tool).
“CSOs must tap the developmental potentials of ICTs to bring their advocacies and services to a wider audience and create a greater impact to their target communities,” said the workshop coordinator Al Alegre. “As articulators of alternative voices, CSOs must likewise be able to protect their space within the internet,” added trainor Nina Somera.
The training-workshop gathered 25 NGO leaders (more than half of them women) representing various NGO alliances and federations involved in several sectors and advocacies: agrarian reform, environment protection, gender rights, fair trade, sustainable livelihoods, migrant workers advocacies, and others. Almost two-thirds of the participants (sixteen) came from outside MetroManila, mostly from the central and southern Philippines (i.e., from Visayas and Mindanao), making this the first truly national trainers’ training-workshop of its kind. Many of them represented CSO alliances, federations and national/regional secretariats, ensuring that the workshop would be echoed throughout many more NGOs, people’s organisations, and social movements.
Participants underwent a rigorous screening process from an open call for participants which resulted in almost 60 applications. Priority was given to CSO managers, in the belief that true gains stemming from this workshop would only be realised with the institutional commitment on behalf of the management level or these NGOs. Participants who had training experience and were positioned to re-echo the training to others were also prioritised.
Presently the participants are involved in a post-training practicum programme, which has them reworking their existing websites and migrating them to content management system (CMS) tools such as Drupal, Mambo, and Geeklog which were introduced during the workshop. Post-workshop learning continues through a wiki site and a mailing list, which functions as an peer helpdesk. Some groups of regional participants are setting up their own technical core groups and are to conduct refresher courses and multiplier sessions, ensuring the impact of the training reaches further.
The workshop was very well received. As various participants commented.
“The topics were relevant, useful, and exciting!” said a member of a national NGO federation.
“All of the contents of the workshop were very relevant to our organisational needs,” added a manager of a human rights network.
“The workshop was very informative and opens up limitless possibilities for us,” said a staff of the Caucus of Development NGOs (CODE-NGO), the largest apex organisation of CSOs in the country, which partnered with FMA in this workshop.
The participants also acknowledged the work of the training team, made up of FMA staff, technical consultants, and partners (i.e., the Institute of Popular Democracy, the newest Philippine member of APC). The team was composed of veterans of FMA’s various FOSS modules, as well as APC’s recent Asian regional training on secure computing and online communications held in May 2005. As Mardi Mapa-Suplido, executive director of Youth Aid said, “All were very good in terms of knowledge and presentations. It is very impressive how most speakers really sat around throughout all the sessions to give additional inputs as this enriched the sessions.”
The workshop was supported by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) from a grant from the Open Society Institute (OSI). Other local sponsors included the Peace and Equity Foundation (PEF), and the Philippine Development NGOs for International Concerns (PHILINK), and the Philippine Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) contributed training facilities.
