Manila, February 19-24, 2009

IBM-Philippines recently organized a Sahana training workshop for members of NDCC, NDCC member agencies and representatives of IBM-Philippines. The workshop was held at the IBM Plaza in Manila, Philippines from the 19th to the 24th February, 2009, and the training was conducted by Chamindra de Silva of Virtusa/LSF and Mifan Careem of Respere.

The 4 day training was broken up into 2 categories - an overview of the Sahana system and the user training was held on the first 2 days, whilst a developer training focusing on the internals of Sahana was held the next 2 days.

I was happy to see the level of enthusiasm from the participants of the workshop- the participants evaluated the system and suggested improvements to it overall from a user perspective - they also discussed the potential of using Sahana in the Philippines and listed specific requirements based on their experience.

All in all, the 4 day training turned out to be immensely successful, and was a satisfying experience to both the participants and the trainers. Kudos to IBM-Philippines for organizing this.

Posted on the Humanitarian-ICT list:

IBM Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs is pleased to host a 4-day training workshop, in Manila, Philippines, February 19-24, 2009 (excluding weekend), on Sahana. As you may know, IBM has partnered with Lanka Software Foundation and the Sahana community in support of Sahana deployments following humanitarian disasters, most recently in China following the May 2008 earthquake and in India following the August 2008 flooding in Bihar State. This workshop is to build additional capacity for successful Sahana deployments in the region.

The four-day workshop will provide an overview of disaster management concepts and a comprehensive curriculum in Sahana user skills; administrator and configuration skills for those wishing to support installation, setup, and training/use of Sahana; and developer information for coders wishing to customize Sahana.

Source: Humanitarian-ICT mailing list

Following the devastating destruction of Cycone Sidr in Bangladesh, it was time for people to help out in the recovery efforts. Pradeeper and myself (Mifan), representing the Sahana team, were flown in courtesy of IBM, where we teamed up with Brent Woodworth of the IBM Crisis Response Team, Mike Donahue of the ITCrisis Team and Shahzaman Mozumder of Thakral IS in Bangladesh. Together we had many meetings and presentations to the DMB, DMIC, the consortium of NGOs and other relief orgs. It was nice to see the Disaster Management Bureau, under the leadership of Mr. Abu Sadique, act quicky on making the decision to go ahead with the deployment of Sahana: thus the following days were for the training of a specialist group to use and manage Sahana. The training group, along with members from the DMB, consisted of Afifa and Rajan, 2 MSc students of the Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology under the guidance of Prof. Mehedi Ahmed Ansary and Dr. Ashutosh Sutra Dhar. We installed a branched version of Sahana on the DMB server and trained the DMB staff on its usage. To match the data gathering process of the DMB, we also developed a Damage Assessment Registry which could produce the required reports based on the reports. Members of the Sahana team also worked remotely on customization and stabilizing the branch.
A meeting with the local Bangladesh Open Source and Linux User’s Groups also proved quite useful: a team is now being built consisting of all the related volunteer groups that would build skills in deploying, training,customizing and using Sahana, which would help out in evolving the system further to Bangladesh’s need.
This deployment would certainly prove useful in the relief efforts of the upcoming weeks. Lets hope that the system would make a positive difference in the efforts, and our thoughts go with the people of Bangladesh.
Other Links:- Shahzaman’s Blog

Article on the Department of Social Welfare and Development