129. Computer Seminars

The NGO I work with focuses on the areas of computer education, community development and business development in a small village in the South-Eastern corner of Moldova.  The “Communitas” NGO (www.communitas.com) has a computer lab at which it conducts Internet and business trainings as well as time available for the public to use the computers.

In the past, the NGO has conducted computer education seminars for youth and adults that the students had to pay for, but this month we offered three seminars each with two parts, Internet navigation and e-mail administration for free due to a Peace Corps/USAID grant (read blog post).

We had 30 students from 10 to 15 years old that participated.  Other than programs offered at the local churches and the local school, it was the first time for the majority of the students to be in a training/seminar atmosphere.  Every participant had a computer to use and the director of the director NGO lead the trainings and used a projector for the students to follow along.  A five hour training is difficult for the students but because of their high interest in the subject and a short snack break, the students gave the trainer their full attention.

Before I helped with this training I thought that e-mail administration and navigating the internet might be a little too basic, but it was perfect for these students and I forgot how few really have computers.  Before they came, only 2 of the 30 students had e-mail addresses, now they are all proud owners of Gmail accounts.  They know how to e-mail people, attach files, and other information about e-mail.  I think we gave them all a small glimpse of what the internet has to offer.  Before this seminar many only knew of the website www.odnoklassniki.ru (“Classmates” a Russian Facebook-like social networking website) but we helped them see that almost any information can be found online.  Now only were they shown sites like Google and Wikipedia, but they also were given time to explore those sites and asks questions.  The other sites they discovered included information about finding jobs, online marketplaces (like Craig’s List), weather, banking and news.  They also explored a word processing program and how it could be used for school or other things.