[Fsf-web] New FSF-India site up and running!

[V. Sasi Kumar]

Dear Baishampayan,

Here is a report of the events during the FSFI Foundation Day 2005, sent
by Kiran Chandra.

Best
Sasi

Report of the July 21 activity

A workshop with 125 participants was conducted on 24th and 25th of June
2005. The workshop decided to hold events marking the inaugural day of
Free Software Foundation of India i.e 21st of July. It had been decided
to organise meetings and display Swecha (a customised Knoppix Live CD
similar to look and feel to Ubuntu with most of the Desktop and common
applications translated to Telugu) in 21 villages, to form 21 GLUGs,
come out with a journal with 21 articles and to organise public
meetings in 4 places (Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Warangal and
Thirupati) on 21st. 

Swecha was displayed in 25 villages and 17 GLUGs were formed in the
state.  The total number of volunteers who worked in the entire activity
was 73. The participation of the memebers was voluntary
and infact they were rejuvenated when they went to the people.  

Public meetings on July 21:

We got a good cooperation from the district administration in all the
districts where we organised public events. Three public meetings were
held in Mahaboobnagar, Medak and Guntur respectively. The district
collectors of Mahaboobnagar and Medak instructed all the MRO's and
MEO's to be present for the event. The Medak District Collector invited
us to make Medak the ground for a first area for implementing our
activities in all parts of his District and offerred to help monetarily
as well. The District Collector of Mehaboobnagar offered us to convert
10 model schools which have 100 computers in total to Swecha (our
distribution in Telugu). The DEO requested us to conduct a work shop for
teachers and offered to extend the support of forming  a group that will
do translations into Telugu and Urdu. The response from the students and
teachers in the schools which we visited was very good and they were
comfortable with the Telugu interface.  

Public events could not be organised in all the important places which
we wanted to. We could organise a public meeting in Guntur and sessions
in SV University and two private engineering colleges. A GLUG was
formed in SVU with the department secretaries of Computer Science, ECE
and EEE  as the core members.

Display of swecha in 21 villages

We could get co-operation from different sections of the society. The
school headmasters, the MPP of Ibrahimpatnam helped us in
organising the events in and around Ibrahimpatnam. We could use the
services of CPI(M) comrades  in Thadepally, Guntur district. The
villages selected were those near the colleges where we had
the possibility of forming GLUGs. The GLUGs were formed and they
activiely participated in making these events a success. The GLUGs
convinced their managements to provide computers for the display in
villages.

Y.Kiran Chandra

-- 
V. Sasi Kumar <sasi.fsf at gmail.com>
Free Software Foundation of India