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