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 programme supported by Phandeeyar, an award winning innovation lab that is spearheading the development of Myanmar’s tech ecosystem.
In various capacities, Sanjana has worked or interacted with Phandeeyar’s outreach and training programs on social media, countering violent extremism, social media verification and other related aspects for over two years. The social media fellowship programme, which will last five months, saw the selection of six teams from over thirty that had applied, interested in working around issues related to countering violent extremism, social justice, the freedom of expression, youth advocacy, as well as tackling fake news and the spread of hate speech.
Sanjana led an intensive five day training programme around the design of a comprehensive, targeted, data driven and goal oriented strategic communications programme, which will be iteratively developed on in the weeks and months ahead around each team’s specific foci. Sanjana will remain a mentor and resource person for the teams in collaboration with key in-country experts from PHandeeyar, and will again meet the teams for a lessons-learnt workshop in August.
The teams will be supported by Phandeeyar’s strategic partnerships, including with Facebook, and by weekly sessions around social media communications in general, and effective campaign strategies on Facebook in particular. Sanjana’s input was based on over a decade of communications planning for civil society and non-governmental organizations working on rights in austere, violent contexts, as well as the strategic use of social media for documentation, collaboration, communication, advocacy and activism.
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