Announcements

1.INDICORPS YOUNG PROFESSIONAL INITIATIVE

Via ThinkChange India

Indicorps, known for its one-year fellowship program, is now launching a new Young Professional Initiative program that allows young Indian professionals to apply their time and skills to a short-term project. The five-month program includes a one-week orientation, a mid-term workshop, an immersion component, and regular reflections.

YPI Term: 1 July to 1 December 2009

For more information and to apply, please visit us online at: www.indicorps.org/ypi. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis (preference will be given to applications before 1 May 2009) until the start date.

More details here.

2. SWADES KI KHOJ 2009 : FELLOWSHIP IN RURAL INDIA

Via Chirag

A two-week foundation course will be held at Chirag, in Nainital District of Uttarakhand, in early July for the selected youth. The foundation course seeks to provide an orientation about life in rural India. The course will commence with an exploration of issues and tools to understand and analyse life in villages. The course will include sessions on primary education, community health care, the relationship between natural resources, humans and livestock, agriculture, community forestry, animal husbandry, off-farm rural livelihoods, water, the not-for-profit sector, governance and Panchayati Raj. The course will be interspersed with visits to villages – including night-stays in homes.

The selected youth will then join their host organisations and will be located there for the next 11 months.

The filled in application form including a one-page statement of purpose have to be received by Chirag by the 15th of May 2009.

More details here.

3. WORKSHOP FOR NGO’s ON FREE SOFTWARE AND LOCAL LANGUAGE COMPUTING

Via NGO Post

This event is geared towards NGOs and similar civil groups who have a need to migrate from proprietary software to open source alternatives.

The workshop will cover the following broad domains:

Free and Open Source Software:

• Introduction to Linux based distributions Fedora, Ubuntu.
• Open Office Tools.
• Internet Tools (firefox, pidgin, thunderbird).
• Desktop publishing (GIMP, scribus, inkscape), Web publishing(CMS, blogs).

Indian Language Support:

• Problems and issues related to use of non-standard/proprietary fonts and tools.
• Status of current support for Indian languages.
• Set up, and customisation for Indian language desktops
• Becoming an active member of the community, and contributing back.
• Discussions on getting support, creating active groups/community out of participants and creating similar groups in their locality/work space.

Date and Place: This event will be held in Delhi,India from June 5 -6, 2009. Last date for submitting application forms: May 10, 2009.

More details here.

Image Source: dwrawlinson