Software Freedom Day 2012 CAMARA Galway (Galway, Ireland)

Introducing Camara

Camara is an International organisation dedicated to using technology to improve education and livelihood skills in disadvantaged communities around the world. With better education we expect these communities to break the cycle of poverty they find themselves in.

. The name [http://www.camara.org|Camara] comes from the Bantu dialect of West Africa and means ‘teacher’ or ‘one who teaches with experience’ .

. In Portuguese it means ‘room’ and apparently in Rwanda it means ‘small banana’ though we have not been able to substantiate this! Many people read it as ‘Camera’ and pronounce it as such, however the correct pronunciation is ‘Ca ma ra’.

What We Plan for the event

. During the SFD event, Camara plans to make her doors open to show how things are done. Actually, Camara operates as a social enterprise and operates in two distinct  business lines: ‘Education Delivery’ and ‘Computer Reuse’. The  connection between these two, seemingly disparate activities is  TECHNOLOGY. We take in used computers from Irish companies and individuals, wipe  their hard drives of data (in line with US Department of Defense  standards), refurbish and load them with educational software before  setting them up as Learning Centres in schools in Africa and Ireland. We train teachers to use these computers as tools to improve the delivery of education to their students. We produce computer training and educational multimedia materials for use by teachers and children. 

. During the event, Camara volunteers are going to showcase some useful open source software that are installed and used for education purposes.

. Camara volunteers will be even available for helping attendees to install and test these tools on their personal computers.

. CDs and other materials will be available for attendees as well as some home made cakes with open source recipe ;)

Where and When?

. The event will take place on the first wednesday of September (4th of September 2012) and will run during the day from 10:am to 6:00 pm.. The event will take place in our drop-off hub which is located on 18 Distillery Rd., (travelling towards Moycullen on the Newcastle Rd., turn right into NUIG at the AIB bank). You can check out the location of the hub in Google streetview [http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=208441374508455006209.00047d...].

CategoryTeam2012