Write-shop in Hyderabad

I conducted a write-shop in Hyderabad. Mr. Ananda Mahto was the facilitator.

Write-shop is a writing workshop where teaching how to write and various techniques of writings were taught to the Development Professionals, working at grass root level. It was a three-day programme. The main objective of the write-shop is to encourage the development workers write their experience. It is planned as a trainers’ training. They can document all the events in the work front. They also can train their team to document. Though this write-shop may feed articles to Development Matters, it would also enrich documentation at regional, programme level and outstanding works may find a place in annual report of the organization. The write-shop consisted of three different sessions, one session a day. Input session gave details of the guidelines and framework for writing – documenting the developmental works. It also had brainstorming to collect all relevant data related to topic and arranging in a sequence. Amina distributed guidelines and framework and Ananda distributed Style Manual for all the participants.

There were eight participants (four Vayalagam, three Kalanjiam, and one Rainfed), Sadasiva, Giridhar, Vittal Rao and Venkateswarlu were also present in the Write-shop. Though there only eight contributing participants, I received 15 articles from the write-shop.

The best performer was Mr. Santhosh Kumar from Bejjur. His first article received many inputs regarding language and subject from the panel. He edited and showed the second draft, which was far better than the first draft, and then he started writing the second article, here the inputs were less, as the quality of his writing improved. After his second article, Mr. Sadasiva gave him few topics to write. Mr. Santhosh submitted four articles and he was writing the fifth one.

I felt very excited to see one person got the spirit of penning down with enthusiasm. I felt I was there to empower one professional. I have faith that the skills he acquired from the write-shop, we would have an open eye, sharpened ear and documenting hand to write down whatever interesting he come across.

I thought, some encouragement should be there to this. I decided to give prize and he bagged the first prize.