In April 2017, Sanjana Hattotuwa, Special Advisor at the ICT4Peace Foundation, was tasked with the design and leading the delivery of a bootcamp workshop for seventeen individuals, comprising of six different teams, from across Myanmar, as part of a social media fellowship programmesupported by Phandeeyar, an award winning innovation lab that is spearheading the development of Myanmar’s tech ecosystem. Read details here.
In August, Sanjana was invited back to Yangon to work with Phandeeyar to assess the progress of the team at the end of their projects. The two day lessons learnt workshop went through the different stages the projects had gone through, various iterations, the reasons for iterating, the general socio-political context within which the projects were located in and the challenges faced by the team in operationalizing work plans.
The sessions were anchored to quantitative and qualitative metrics. Output, outcomes, impact, unintended consequences, insights and intentionality were thoroughly interrogated in collaboration with the teams, through sessions co-designed by Phandeeyar and Sanjana. Valuable insights around the spread of disinformation over online vectors, including social media, was shared with the participants, based on original research and consultations conducted by Phandeeyar.
Sanjana was also tasked with leading a session on dealing with trauma, stress and mental health for activists. Detailed recommendations were also provided to Phandeeyar around the continuation of the Fellowship program in the future, ranging from training and technical support to more generally conceptual and strategic input.