Mobile Advisors, active in the whole of Poland, are one of the most important elements of the “ICT for Local Development” Program. They have been joined by more than 30 new experts!
Training for those willing to help lasted 6 days in two parts. The first of them took place in the middle of November and the second one at the end of the same month. The participants could learn new skills or strengthen their knowledge. The current group of Mobile Advisors acted as trainers.
The first part of the training program was inaugurated by Radosław Jasiński from the Polis-American Freedom Foundation and Dawid Szarański from the Information Society Development Foundation. The opening lecture was delivered by Maciej Budzich, author of the Mediafun blog. He is an expert in the domain of application of modern technology in communication and promotion, so in two areas that the Mobile Advisors also will work in.
The training part concentrated on the varied scopes of activities of the Mobile Advisors. The workshops focused on the challenges and problems facing the third sector as well as the role of the Mobile Advisors within the system – who they are, how they work and how they are supposed to help their organizations.
Technological topics dominated the discussion. The topics included existing ICT solutions in the third sector, as well as different solutions that should be introduced by encouraging the different organizations to participate in them. Social media, communication technologies, multimedia, auditing, marketing – all of that and more was covered in the training.
“We tried to diagnose technological problems. Each participant was given one problem to solve – those problems were drawn from the topics that will be facing them in the next month, quarter or year,” says Bartosz Narzelski, a designer of services and communications at Laboratorium EE. “Thanks to several tools that help in the project process, the participants realized what their problems and challenges were and identified them exactly.”
Giving the problem a name can be quite a task, as it turns out – not only for the Mobile Advisors and organizations, but, in general, for people advising others.
“This problem is very common among advisors and consultants,” Narzelski explains. “People often say »We’ve got a problem« and they need tools to structure that knowledge and the problems. In the beginning, for example, many entities will say that they »Need a website«. After a careful analysis, however, it runs out that they have no need for a site and a Facebook fan page is enough. They cannot diagnose their problem, however.”
This 6-day intensive training for Mobile Advisors was created to transplant such kind of knowledge to them. If the experts are to advise others, they have to learn how to diagnose problems they face. Looking at the commitment of the trainees, however, we should not be worried about that.
All that’s left for us is to congratulate the newly appointed Mobile Advisors and wish them many successes in their mentoring career that they have just started. We want the local organizations to see the potential that is within them. They can tap that strength thanks to the Mobile Advisors. They work for you and have enormous amounts of passion at their disposal. We encourage all the organizations in need of help to contact a Mobile Advisor – you can find a map of the network here:
http://www.technologielokalnie.pl/wsparcie-i-produkty/
The Innovation Fund is a part of the “ICT for Local Development” Program run by the Information Society Development Foundation and created by the Polish-American Freedom Foundation.
