Rural India is hungry for digital tools
On March 19 2015, Soochna Seva conducted a two-day Training and Capacity Building workshop specially designed for the field team. Held in Donbosco Technical Institute in Jamia Nagar, New Delhi, the workshop saw a turnout of 80 people including each and every field staff – District Managers, Block Manager, Block Coordinators, and Fellows across five districts – Guna (Madhya Pradesh), Barmer (Rajasthan), Tehri Garhwal (Uttarakhand), West Champaran (Bihar), and Ranchi (Jharkhand) participated.
Shri Rameshwaran Prasad from ALOK Sansthan was a special attendee, sharing insights from the ground of West Champaran. The workshop had guest speakers from CGNet Swara, Shri. Ratnesh Mishra and social entrepreneur Shri Ravindra Ghate, and awardee of the National Youth Award conferred by Shri APJ Abdul Kalam, erstwhile President of India.
The special focus of this workshop was to get feedback from the ground and focus on the challenges and how best to resolve them to take the program forward keeping the overall objective in mind.
While there were sessions on ICT and its effective use in rural areas, how to write case stories and success stories, sessions on Finance, and HR organized by the central team, the objective of the workshop was to hear from the ground and therefore there was sufficient time given to each and every district team to voice their thoughts, ideas, and challenges. The entire workshop was broken up in parts to include plays and role plays to highlight specific issues from the ground. The workshop was interactive in nature where typical issues from the ground across the districts came up.
Ratnesh Mishra from CGNet Swara spoke about how to mobilize community and get recorded messages directly from the village community on local issues or interests. CGNet Swara is a voice-based portal, freely accessible via mobil that allows anyone to report and listen to stories from the ground. There was a overwhelming response on the technology and method and there wasa short discussion on how it can be integrated in the Soochna Seva program.
Ravindra Ghate shared his experiences of his struggle in his early life and his rise to a social entrepreneur. His experiences boosted up the spirits of the ground team and brought a healthy discussion across the team.
The workshop ended with high energy as Osama Manzar, Founder Director of Digital Empowerment Foundation, had an interactive session with the participants making it evident to the field team that they are the soul of the project and only their commitment and dedication will bring success to the program.
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