Press Room

Fourth Advanced Practical VSAT Training Launched in Nairobi

April 30, 2010

NAIROBI, Kenya -- NetHope, the US based global information technology alliance of 29 of the world's largest aid agencies, in partnership with the Global VSAT Forum (GVF) and African eDevelopment Resource Centre (AeRC), launched the fourth advanced practical VSAT training  in Nairobi March 8-10, 2010.  NetHope and the Member organizations are extremely grateful to SpeedCast for providing an $8,000 grant to make this training possible. Twelve NetHope IT professionals representing six African countries participated and successfully completed the certification program. The GVF Instructor was Nenad Bojovic, International Rescue Committee Manager, who became a  certified GVF VSAT instructor late last year. “Plenty of troubleshooting and best practice scenarios were covered on both iDirect and LinkStar platforms. The students worked very hard and are going to make excellent Installer.”, said Nenad Bojovic.  
 
Plans are now in the works to host the next training class this September.  “In 2011, we expect to go to a quarterly schedule and also  host similar training in West Africa and South Asia”, said David Hartshorn, Secretary General of the Global VSAT Forum.  David further said that  “Students have a good academic and practical grasp of VSAT installation and troubleshooting by the end of the training program. This has been an extremely successful collaboration.”  The program has a positive impact on the NetHope member’s capability to roll out VSAT sites faster and with less installation problems than before training was available to the internal humanitarian organization workforce.  The end beneficiary programs function much more efficiently once good connectivity is established.
 
If you need additional information, please contact Joe Simmons, NetHope Global Connectivity Director, joesimmons@nethope.org