A group of people broke down technological barriers last week when they completed a five-day Web2forDev 2.0 and Social Media course.
Throughout the week, the 22 Samoans from various agencies learned how to incorporate social media such as Facebook and Twitter into their respective work places.
Women in Business Development Inc (W.I.B.D.I.) Media Specialist, Faumuina Felolini Tafuna’i said the purpose of the training course was to see what the social media knowledge is like in Samoa and what barriers are being faced by those who use it.
“Because we know that we are not really active in social media in Samoa, so why is that?” she asked.
“One of the barriers we see within the government ministries is the barrier to access.”
“And that information officers don’t have a high enough ranking to have internet access and so that means they are unable to use social media.”
“(For example) the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (M.A.F.) (only) recently set-up a facebook page after going through proposal process.”
“Also there’s a general barrier around cost, we need to bring down cost of data in Samoa because I guess its inhibiting the use of it.”
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Faumuina said one successful example of a campaign that made use of the Social Media was the campaign around the recent United Nations Small Island Developing States (U.N. S.I.D.S.) conference.
“For instance the U.N. S.I.D.S. campaign. There was a campaign with foreign affairs, it’s a short term Facebook and Twitter campaign that raised a lot of awareness in short amount of time,” Faumuina said.
“We saw that that was successful.”
Faumuina said success is what they wished to be replicated by the participants especially those who come from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (M.N.R.E.) and M.A.F.
“Social Media in Samoa is another wonder to the work that we are doing here in this country, it also allows for outside people to look at what we are doing,” she said.
“And if we’re going to attract investment opportunities in this country, they need to know what Samoa is doing, what is the area that we are ahead of and I think that this one way we can do that.”
M.A.F. Senior I.T. Officer, Sarai Faleupolu Tevita, said the training helped to refresh her knowledge to use these web tools.
“Because I used it before but that was only for myself not for work,” she said.
“But I see that tool as more effective communication for M.A.F. because we have so many projects and we need to showcase them well to the donors, especially to the farmers and fishers and our stakeholders.”
“For example for M.A.F., the Google Docs and Facebook, I think are more effective for the research side of M.A.F. cause there are a lot of people out there who don’t know what we are doing.”
She said the social media tools are also important in providing feedback and in improving what the Ministry does.
She further urged the other government ministries to try to use these tools to improve their work.
According to the Web2forDev website, technological innovation is taking place at a breath-taking pace.
“Simple, open source internet-based application and services designed t enhance on-line collaboration are now available to the wider public at little or no cost at all,” the site reads.
“These new online technologies known as Web 2.0 and ‘social media’ enable people to collaborate to create, share and publish information.”
The training course was hosted by W.I.B.D.I. in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (S.P.C.), the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (S.P.R.E.P.) through the Pacific Environment Information
Network (P.E.I.N.), and C.T.A and covered advanced online searching, getting information served via alerts and RSS, ollaborating remotely using Google Drive, Dropbox, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), online mapping and social media was held at S.P.R.E.P. Training and Education Centre.
During the training, the participants were grouped and were tasked to create campaign strategies.
Among the proposed strategies were Social Media Campaign Strategy on Youth Unemployment in Samoa and the Social Media Strategy for the Tuna Commission meeting in Samoa.
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