by Carlos Mayans

09 April 2009

Kolkata, India: It was about two months ago that I came to know about the NGO Uddami, run by Ms. Alison Saracena and her husband Mr. Brian Forst, both from the United States. For more than 10 years they have been providing computer education free of cost to poor youth from Kolkata.

They were teaching the use of all the main business management software, like the Microsoft Office suite (but also other programs that are popular in India, like Tally). Alison told me that they were looking for a partnership with the private sector to give their students some kind of certification after the completion of their courses, which might help them to get jobs. Becoming a Cisco Local Academy could help, I said.

But when I told Alison that the training needed to start a Cisco Local Academy was only in Jaipur, Rajasthan (around 1,500 km from Kolkata), she told me that it was not possible for her to send the students that far.

I felt the whole project was disappearing in front of my eyes. But I couldn't just accept the negative. I decided this time should be different. I would do anything to make this a success story. I decided to go to Jaipur and take the training myself. So I did, and so it happened.

The first week of training I gave at Uddami having just finished, I felt very happy when my students thanked me for the practical lessons. Last Saturday we deleted and created partitions, we used strange drive names for the partitions like 'Z:' or 'X:' and we also installed Ubuntu, a community-developed and free Linux-based operating system. Cisco India has also just donated 10 used but fully functional computers to Uddami, which will help us as we proceed.

The group of students is extraordinary. Let me explain this with an example.

In the first day I asked my students about their ambitions in life. I also asked them for their expectations of the course and to define a project in which they could use all the things we would learn in the Cisco IT Essentials school to help their communities.

It was amazing to hear that the ambition of some of the students was to replicate Uddami's project in their villages!

The idea is that at the end of the course, every student would make a small donation. With the money raised we can buy one PC and a number of monitors and videocards. Following the example of Brazil's Government in virtualization of computers, and of course after assembling the computer in the class ourselves, we could make five computer stations out of one box.

In this way five people can have the experience of using one computer while physically they are sharing only one machine. USB keyboards and mice would do the rest.

Next week we will start the third chapter: 'Assembling a Computer'. I always remind my students that we have to learn everything perfectly to be able to succeed in the final project. But in this case, even before that, we will start doing something for society.

An NGO providing computer education for the children of prostitutes in one red light area in Kolkata, where two of my students work as teachers, is moving to a bigger place and they are about to buy four new computers.

My students offered to buy, assemble and prepare those computers for that NGO so that the NGO can save some money. Assembling those computers will be the practical exercise for Chapter 3! No need to disassemble and assemble one of our own computers… We will work with the real thing.

Tomorrow a second group of students will start at Uddami; eight students, all of them are deaf.

Alison and I have the same dream: a Cisco Local Academy for the deaf run by deaf. In this country, there is a quota for the disabled in Government jobs, around 2 percent of the jobs are reserved. This quota is never filled because there are few qualified people with disabilities.

We believe that by giving practical knowledge and this certification to disabled students, we are making not only economically independent workers but self-sufficient citizens - of this city, of this country and of the world.

From the eight students we expect to train two to four teachers who will run and teach at the Cisco Local Academy in sign language. And one thing we have to make clear when speaking about deaf people is that once in front of the computer... their disability disappears!

Read more from Carlos Mayans here.