Smartpur Immersion Annual Meet 2023

Smartpur Immersion Annual Meet 2023

By Digital Empowerment Foundation

Published on: April 18, 2023

A refresher training is a crucial aspect of maintaining the core aspects of a project like Smartpur which has been active for many years across different locations in India. It is a great opportunity for everyone involved in the project to come together, reflect on their journeys, exchange ideas, learn from each other and get back into the field with a fresh perspective.

Smartpur is a digital village ecosystem, a project that is being implemented by Digital Empowerment Foundation and NOKIA. The project has its presence in Uttar Pradesh (Barabanki and Ghazipur), Haryana (Nuh), Rajasthan (Alwar and Bharatpur), Telangana (Choutuppal), Karnataka (Kollegal) and Andhra Pradesh (Vizag and Chirala). The project started back in 2018 in Nuh and soon, realizing its importance in the context of rural India, it expanded to other locations across the country.  

A refresher training is a part of the project, wherein each year, the team from the head office and ground comes to learn and unlearn various learning methodologies. A three day workshop from 14th to 16th March was conducted in Alwar, Rajasthan where all the team members gathered to explore and serve the community. The agenda of the workshop was to

1. Increase the self-confidence and morale of the team and build a sense of unity among them. 

1. Update the team with the latest trends in the space of digitalization. 

1. Bridge the gap between the old and new skills, old and new team members. 

1. Increase the pool of talent to upgrade the project and upskill their abilities.  

Day one of the workshop witnessed many energizers and icebreakers to bring a sense of oneness in the team across the country. A session was conducted by the Founder and Director of Digital Empowerment Foundation, Osama Manzar, wherein he discussed the new opportunities that Smartpur center (Hub and Spoke model) can take up, grow as entrepreneurs, and upskill the digital ecosystem of the communities. 

Day two was spent playing games designed to build on the team work and empathy which needs to be incorporated in professional life. Following this, there was a session with two team members of KPMG which guided the Smartpur team on the data collection and various reporting methods. Following this, Smartpur team had a session on the various aspects of documentation, case stories, social media posts and research.

The team got various insights into how they need to record and collect the case stories, what are the questions they can ask the beneficiaries, how to collect the survey questions etc. The team had many interactive sessions on team building, liaising with other departments for implementing tasks at the ground level and relationship building with the communities. 

The day ended by recognizing the team efforts and work of each location, as to how they have been able to make the project a sustainable one throughout the implementation. 

The third day of the workshop was a visit to the center of Rajasthan, where team members from other locations of Smartpur learnt the working mechanism of the centers together.