by Seelan Palay

In early May, we facilitated and participated in the 3rd Mekong ICT Camp, held in Cha-Am, Thailand. Over the course of the five-day event, we held presentations on video advocacy, video distribution, and online subtitling.

The camp is a biannual training workshop on information, communication, and technologies for citizen media, community health, and civil society development in the Mekong sub-region (specifically Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam). The group of over 60 participants included developers, journalists, and social workers.

Our sessions were the only ones focusing on the use of video for campaign purposes, which attendees felt would be very useful in the development of their work.

We also took part in the other series’ of sessions such as ‘Open Street Maps’. The various examples of open mapping tools being used for social change in the Mekong region would have a lot of value if they were shared among other networks in Southeast Asia.

The experience of learning and sharing at the camp, and the networking opportunities that it provided, was timely and essential, as we look into visiting Burma in the near future.