Ushahidi and Women Web Portal Training

Ms. Keo Keoung, Member of Board of Directors of the Open Institute and the executive director of Heifer Cambodia, was delivering her speech to open the training session. Phnom Penh 31 January, 2013 Photo: Open InstituteA training of Ushaidi and Women Web portal was conducted at Open Institute training center, in collaboration with Ministry of Women's Affairs and The National League of Commune/Sangkat and the Cambodian NGO Committee on CEDAW, on 31 January 2013. There were 15 participants from various non-governmental organization includes Silaka, FADC (Koh Kong), Cambodia Association for Development of Poor People (CADPP) , AMARA , Rhac, Arun Ras, Development Association of cAmbodia (DAC), Fine Arts Association (FAA), Cambodia Center for Human Rights (CCHR), Cambodia Labor Federation (CLC), and NGO Coalition to Address (Sexual) Exploitation of Children in Cambodia (COSECAM).
 
In her welcome remarks, Ms. Chim Manavy, Executive Director of Open Institute, mentioned that this training was organized for the members of Cambodian NGO-CEDAW and relevant institutions. She highlighted that the main objective of this training is to build up the capacity of women organizations and relevant institutions who are working in gender based violence to use computers in Khmer and use Ushahidi to research, receive, report, discuss and share information involving gender violence, more effectively.
 
Ms. Chim Manavy continued to emphasize that Ushahidi is a platform that allows information collection, visualization and interactive mapping, facilitating participants' work by allowing them to submit the report and retrieve the information related to gender violation more conveniently. This information is very vital for those working in preventing such violence. She added policy makers and others will find the data generated from this Ushahidi useful to formulate any relevant policy, in order to prevent gender based violence in Cambodia.
 
Participants were learning how to use Ushahidi and Women Web portal at Open Institute training center. Phnom Penh 31 January, 2013 Photo: Open InstituteSpeaking to open the participants at the training, Ms. Keo Keoung, memebr of Board of Directors of the Open Institute and the executive director of Heifer Cambodia, noted the important use of Usahidi and Women Web portal in reporting and retrieving information. She also appreciated the training that focused not only to the NGO staff but to the governmental institutions which is a very good collaborating work. Ms. Keo Keang furthered her recommendation to the participants that they share the knowledge and information to the related people at work and to the people in the community.
 
The one-day training, which is a part of a project operated by Open Institute and Association for Progressive Association (APC), funded by The Swedish Program on ICT for Developing Regions (SPIDER), was divided into two sessions. During the morning session, participants were theoretically taught Gender and ICT for Development, and Gender based Violence. In the afternoon session, the participants practiced logging into the web portal and started using the Ushahidi. There are a number of cases that the participants have learned to report on the Ushahidi platform.
 
Ms. Heng Chenda, a participant from Cambodia Labor Confederation, showed her strong interest in the training. She mentioned that the training was very relevant to her work which mostly involves with women. However, she continued, the period of the training was very short. The training of Ushahidi and web portal required that people have knowledge regarding to computer and internet; thus, those people who had no experience with such technology would find it complicated to use. She also determined to share knowledge learned to as many people as possible. According to Ms. Por Tieng, a participant who is a head of Development of Association Cambodia, the training was very useful. She also committed to share the knowledge to others. Mr. Em Sophat, a deputy director of Arun Ras organization, reiterated the importance of the training. He continued that Ushahidi and the women web portal were really open to people from anywhere to use. He hoped that the women based violence will be reduced soon in the future.
 
For more information in Khmer please click here... Documentation:
 

1. Agenda of the training
2. Speech of Ms. Chim Manavy
3. About the project
4. Training material on Gender Based Violence
5. Training material on Gender&ICT4Development
6. Training material on Ushahidi