Virtual Activism organized a series of workshops in Erbil, Iraq over two years, in collaboration with Al Amal Association. Approximately 60 participants have been trained on technology and social media in those workshops.
We also organized a workshop in collaboration with Internews Europe and Al Amal Association at the EU at its European Technology and Training Center in Erbil, on the Use of Social Media for NGOs and the Media. The workshop itself was called the Iraqi Media Junction Training, 23-28 August 2010.
The workshop was 5 days, with the final day being a visit to Aswat al Iraq newspaper to talk to journalists and the media and see them in action.
Learning Goals
The training course aimed to assist trainees in the following:
- Acquire skills to create an effective social media strategy for their work
- Identify trainee technology needs and their ability to transfer knowledge and information to others
- Apply skills learned in the training to their own work and to train others
- Enable participants to evaluate available technologies.
The training was skills-based and discussion based and covered the following issues:
- Online media vs regular journalism
- Micro-blogging [twitter and twitter tools]
- Data visualization: ushahidi maps for activism and news covering, google maps
- Blogging and creating your website through WordPress.
- Cloud computing and free and open source software
- Video streaming
- Privacy and security online
Participants
18 participants attended the workshop, divided almost evenly between journalists and NGOs. There were 4 young women and 14 men.