By Apsara Murale

KUCHING: Indigenous people from Sarawak learned to share their concerns on the threats to their way of life to the world- via Internet despite not being proficient in English.

A workshop was conducted by the Centre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) to build the capacity of the indigenous people in Strategic Information Communication Technology, for twenty-seven community organizers from the Jaringan Orang Asal (JOAS) network. They have experienced the effects of illegal logging, deforestation and destruction of indigenous culture and are eager to share their stories, history, and cultural heritage to the audience at large.

The workshop was held at the Sarawak Dayak and Iban Association (SADIA) office on 22-25th October. To overcome language barrier, trainers Gayathry Ventikeswaran Executive Director of CIJ, Jennifer and Sean Rubis used Malay in their instruction. This helped created an informal learning atmosphere and participants overcame their reservation to seek assistance when in doubt about the lessons learned.

They learned to write about community events with news angle to maximise their chance of being picked up by the media. These included lessons of ethical writing to ensure credibility and the importance of clear and concise information. Andrew Weir, a CIJ intern from Canada helped conducted a tutorial on using Skype, a lesson which got the participants excited as they tried communicating via webcam in a different room.

Jennifer and Sean Rubis gave a lesson on how to use the Internet for information and on blogging. Participants were divided into groups of three to four and asked to look for information total area of oil palm estate plantation in Sarawak. This proved daunting for the indigenous as the web is in English. Their enthusiasm was however evident as they did not shy away from asking questions and collaborated among different groups to complete the task.

As language cease to be an issue in blogging, the session was the most anticipated. Participants were quick in posting entries ranging from their experiences of the ongoing media training workshop to their history and cultural heritage. One of the participants was moved to the tears as he saw his posting about the history of his community is now open to the audience globally.

Junita Juran from Partners of Community Organizations (PACOS) said the community need more workshops that are catered to everyone’s different learning experiences and pace and hopes that there will be follow-up training.