HIA Senior Fellows from France and Germany Participate in EU-Sponsored Seminar on Web-based Communications

On February 12, nine HIA Senior Fellows from France and Germany met in Paris to take part in a seminar on web-based communications. The seminar is part of a two-year project entitled, “Mentor Development Programs: Transforming learners into educators supported by e-communication tools.”

A partnership between five European NGOs, the program strives to enrich the level of participation of students from disadvantaged minority groups through use of web-based technologies.

German Senior Fellow Miriam Beck gives the following testimonial:

“As Senior Fellows, we often think of ourselves as “learners.” However, through the course of the seminar, we quickly noticed how our use of e-communication tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and others put us in a position of mentors. As members of our organizations’ social networks and target groups (potential members), our way of communicating online shapes the organization’s choice of communication tools. While our views on the subject diverged, we all agreed on the need of organizations to develop a specific communication strategy to reach their constituencies. This becomes especially clear when trying to get in touch with handicapped persons. Thanks to a presentation of the French NGO ARPEJEH, we were able to experience using the internet from the perspective of a blind person. We discussed the challenge of building websites which are both accessible for blind persons and equally well designed for non-blind persons. In the afternoon we were invited to a major telecommunication company to learn about their use of e-communication tools within their company. We were introduced to the use of Wufoo, a tool to build contact forms, invitations, online surveys and event registrations, doodle (for scheduling meetings) and data storage websites. I don’t consider myself a geek at all, but I saw a clear utility to the tools to which we were exposed and look forward to implementing many of them.”

More information here.