Rural Window: Lesson 1-Internet. Lesson 2-Blogging.
In smaller towns in India, the internet and all that it has to offer is regarded as something from the depths of the unknown. So last month, when Urvashi and I were somewhere in Uttar Pradesh, we asked six of our Youth Rights Advocates to open their personal email accounts and start blogging. That when they went into traumatic attacks: “…where do we get internet from?!…”, “…we don’t know English too well!”, “…who will want to listen to us!”, “…we do not understand these things” …and the list was endless.
Even though I paid no attention to their cries then, I partially agreed with them. In a small town in India, getting an internet café with functional computers and good speed internet connection is still a dream. But such trivialities didn’t deter us for even a moment. We marched ahead, till we came across an internet cafe with eight computers and a fairly good internet connection. So on a hot Saturday afternoon, with temperatures at 42 degrees Celsius, six Rights Advocates in Lucknow, were introduced to the virtual world, with special courses on emailing and blogging. Each was allotted a computer and were walked through the basics of internet, emailing, managing ones personal mail box and finally…THE BLOG. They were made to read already blogs on the Breakthrough Blog s as well as our very own Bell Bajao. Having familiarised themselves with the look of the sites, we explained to them how to post new blogs and comment on others. Additional details like what “moderator approval” meant were also keenly discussed.
Finally after an entire hour of fiddling through the Bell Bajao site, going through the various categories and reading up on some blogs, they finally felt more confident and agreed to comment on a blog. I felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction to see them getting comfortable with a space Breakthrough uses as a platform to spotlight its work.
When they slowly began writing in broken English, Urvashi and I realised the diversity of the target group that Breakthrough works with and how bit-by-bit these students are also taking a step towards increasing their capacities in an entirely new field.
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