FAT News
Workshop for Girls from the Bastis of Lajpat Nagar
Posted by Administrator (admin) on Jun 17 2008 at 7:52 AM
Although most schools have computers and regular computer classes for the children, when we visited the bastis of Lajpat Nagar 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 the computers 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.
Keeping this in mind, a 10-day workshop for girls from the bastis of Lajpat Nagar (New Delhi) was organized by FAT from 2nd June to 13th June aiming to introduce them to computers and Internet. The workshop conducted for 4 hours everyday aimed at building the confidence amongst the girls to use computers on their own. The participants were given hands-on experience on connecting the different part of the computer, starting the computer, running the programs they want to use, and shutting down the computer. The girls were also introduced to Internet. Focus was laid on learning to use word processors and finding resources using the Internet.
Initially the workshop was planned for 8 girls since we had only 4 computers. The girls were asked to come a few days before the workshop and get themselves registered for the workshop. To our surprise, 17 girls turned up for the workshop on the first day. Not wanting to send them back disappointed, we divided them into 2 groups based on their age and asked the two groups to come at different times. Group 1 had 8 girls from the age group 12 to 15 and Group 2 had 9 girls from the age group 16 to 20. Later it was seen that the girls in the Group 2 had shown better performance.