E-Mediat 5th Workshop

We’ve finished workshop5 in 3 centers. It was one of the most interactive sessions as we celebrated the last workshop in the curriculum.

Sessions were focusing on how to use mobile tools in order to support your social strategy.  

Participants were very interactive as they share their experience in using mobile tools in their NGOs.  Most of them use mobile messages to raise awareness, fundraising & to connect with their audience.   

Tripoli participants use mobile messages to invite or announce their audience as most of them don't have access to internet.

Participants benefited a lot from this workshop, they learned that they should know their audience before sending the message & to know how to create  a  less characters with a content containing direct message depending on the cause they are working on.

Exxon Telecom was sponsoring this workshop & they offered 50 free SMSs for every participant NGO.

Workshop4 “Digital Photography & Video”

We finished the workshop 4 in 3 centers. It was one of the best interactive sessions. We added 2 modules to it: Photography & Movie making.
Photography session sponsored by Canon (A professional photographer gave the session & a canon camera was given for best photo in each center. History of photography, How to select a good camera, How to take a good photo, Common mistakes, Different shooting cases…..
Movie making By A volunteer director: Ihssan Azmeh gave the session & covered the following topics: Movies types, types of shots, before shooting, writing a script, storyboard, movie rules, equipment…..
The participants benefited a lot & applied what they have learned on the spot. They took photos & joined the trainer in doing the assessment of each photo to learn from others’ mistakes. They took videos shots with the FLIP,: interviews, activities, film with a storyboard conversations….& they commented on each others’ movies with the trainer who was showing them the good & the bad shots.
At the end they edited their movies with Flip & movie maker & started uploading them on their YouTube channels , their Facebook pages & E-Mediat page which made the participants from other centers excited for their workshops . We have received many requests from NGOs & individuals to attend the coming sessions in other centers. This interaction over the Facebook pages made the LBCI TV channel call us to host us in the nonprofit section of their famous program: Helwi Beirut on the 21st of October.
We also hosted a director & reporter from the news department of AL Jadeed TV to share his experience & give tips to participants on how to take the best shots from any activity or demonstration that best delivers the message in a short time & how to attract the audience to watch ur report & more…..

Thank you Cisco for the useful Flip offered to Emediat participants

Photography Session presented by CANON @ IT Lebanon, Tripoli

Interesting photography session presented by canon, participants learned how & when to take a photo & the right way for holding a camera. They can now know what to ask for when buying a camera.

Najah Ahdab from Safadi Foundation won a digital camera from CANON during a competition to choose the best photo.

First Workshop to train NGOs on Social Media – IT Lebanon (Tripoli)-20 May 2011

It was a great experience to share the NGOs skills, knowledge & especially their fears of using social media.

NGOs who participated from Tripoli were: Safadi Foundation, Al Azem Wal Saadah, Al Rabat, Al Moosawat, Complete Personality Center, Taaheel Al Shalal, Lebanese Association for Support of scientific research, Maan Loubnan, Lebanese Consultant Center for Development, Jinan University, Al Nahda.

Only some of them use social media tools & most of them are still crawling online, they were interested to know the importance of networking between NGOs & then they prepared their own networking plan.

About E-mediat

E-Mediat is a dynamic public-private partnership providing cutting-edge new media training to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

New Media program will provide basic digital infrastructure, specialized training, and an online learning community (OLC) to assist the organizations in their communications strategies and ultimately foster more pluralistic and participatory societies including women and youth. The training, coaching and mentoring opportunities offered through the New Media program will empower Participating Organizations (POs) with the knowledge, skills and support to use new media technology to tell their stories, build their membership and support bases, and connect to a community of peers around the world.

  
E-mediat program has been designed to accomplish the following objectives:

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I    Increase CSO/NGO knowledge, skills and access to use new media effectively

-        Improve communication between CSO/NGO leaders and constituents

-         Improve communication between CSO/NGOs and governments in the MENA region

IIE proposes to provide technical support and training on new media for civil society to 150 - 250 NGOs and CSOs across five countries: Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, UAE, Yemen & Tunisia.

Lebanese Example of Free Agents

The last topic in our session today was about free agents like @uncultured, which made me think about the initiative that started here in Beirut in 2009 by @migheille - LebFundraising.

In LebFundraising online influences were mobilized around the idea of getting presents for children on Christmas; each by using their network of friends and connections for both doing fundraising events and getting direct donations.

And on the other end, we looked for NGOs, orphanages or poor families that needed help and coordinated on what type of gifts were needed, how many children they had... All of this was done in less than two months in an "unorganized" online manner with each person taking up the load they desire, and around 300 gifts were bought/donated.

Sadly we were not able to reciprocate the initiative the next year, because all of the group was very busy.

Another initiative is Rita Kamel's initiative to shave her head to raise awareness about cancer and her quest to get hair from ladies for wigs for children. Which brings us to another personal initiative for cancer awareness One Wig Stand, by Loryne Atwi.