Zambia women's organizations get trained in Web 2.0

Training covers setting up blog accounts, publishing posts, replying to comments, posting pictures to the Web and signing up for RSS feeds, said Chimika Lungu, ZARD's capacity building and technical support officer.

Among groups slated to benefit are the Women's Information for Development Network (WIDNet) and information officers from provincial partner organizations, Lungu said.

Web 2.0 gives users a platform to generate, re-purpose, and consume shared content, Lungu said. Content generation becomes easier as users are able to socialize, collaborate and work together. The tools will increase the overall participation of the women's movement in the country's policy matters, Lungu said.

ZARD will compare the use of Web 2.0 tools before and after the training sessions and will monitor blogs to test the effectiveness of the program, Lungu noted.

One of the challenges that nongovernment organizations face in Zambia is that they haven't invested much in resources to enable Web communication or Web site management, One World Africa Director Priscilla Jere said.

Organizations must link Web communication to their work, Jere added, noting that many information officers lack knowledge in managing online content.

One participant in the training is Nelson Banda, an information officer from the National Lobby Group. He said he has limited skills in uploading content to the organization's Web site. He added that his group also must learn what it needs to invest in to use the Internet effectively for communication.

The training will also help in a culture where oral content - in the form of audio and video - has primacy, according to Yese Bwalya, an ICT4D consultant. "It's important to promote Web solutions that allow video and audio content to be easily and cheaply shared," he said.

In addition to enhancing the use of interactive tools, the training sessions will provide input for the development of a content strategy for the WIDNet project Web site.