FAT organized a workshop for girls from the bastis of Lajpat Nagar (New Delhi) aiming to introduce them to computers and Internet. There were 17 participants in this workshop within the age group 12 to 18. Streched over 10 days, this workshop aimed at building the confidence amongst the girls to use computers on their own, right from connecting the different part of the computer, to starting the computer, to running the programs they want to use, to shutting down the computer. The girls were also introduced to Internet. Then the girls were given projects that they had to do using the Internet and a word processor. The workshop was facilitated by Gayatri Buragohain.
Although most schools have computers and regular computer classes for the children, when we visited the bastis and spoke to the girls there we came to know that the students hardly get to use the computers. And even if they do get to use them sometimes, they are only allowed to paint in a program that their teacher runs for them. Most of the girls we spoke to had never used computers and thought that they can never learn to use a computer. A few who had used computers a couple of times before wanted to learn more but thought that using a computer was not easy. After success of this workshop, we decided to start a permanent tech center girls to explore technologies like computers and Internet. The FAT Tech Center presently caters to adolescent girls not just from this locality, but also from other areas.
