THE Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST) inaugurated its first DigiBayanihan Center of Excellence last Feb. 6 at the DOST Compound, Governor M. Cuenco, Barangay Banilad, Cebu City.
DigiBayanihan is an innovative digital empowerment movement with the aim of providing digital literacy, digitally-enabled literacy and digital citizenship.
Supported by Google.org, the program is backed by an ever-growing multi-stakeholder partnership that aspires to touch, train and transform Filipino lives through digital empowerment.
Part of the program is to establish six centers of excellence around Visayas and Mindanao.
“The centers aim to become inclusive havens of free digitally-related education for all,” said ASSIST managing director Sreenivas Narayanan.
These will become community hubs for students and other interested learners to access ICT-enabled services, such as digital literacy, education, e-government and workforce development.
DigiBayanihan, in partnership with DICT Tech4Ed, will conduct capacity-building certification training on how to use DigiBayanihan content for all Tech4Ed managers.
Digital library
There will also be scheduled series of training on digital library and digital content development for public library staffs, teachers and other community members for them to be become DigiBayanihan instructors, advocates and service providers.
The goal is to advance and to strengthen their digital capacity to inclusively benefit their communities.
The program plans to conduct four mini-forums in every center. It encourages non-government organizations to take part and be the forefront of these digital learning hubs.
It aims to establish technology and learning infrastructure open to all. Workshops will also be organized using content created and produced by DigiBayanihan.
The organizers will maintain a periodic face-to-face engagements and visits to closely monitor the processes of each center to ensure its success.
To support the centers, it will be linked with the other ASSIST Development Solutions and ASSIST Social Actions projects to propagate its ecosystem and widen its network.
These community hubs will serve as online guide providers for free resources intended for the regional audience.