Initiatives

We set up our Indian arm 'The Prag Foundation for Capacity Building' (popularly known as ‘Prag Foundation’) in April 2006 as an Indian Public Charitable Trust to work towards developing human, scientific, technological, institutional capacities and the skills of the members of the socially and economically disadvantaged communities of Northeast India.

Foundation’s areas of activities are:

  1. Human Resource Development (equipping individuals with the understanding, skills and access to information, knowledge and training that enable them to perform effectively)
  2. Organizational Development
  3. Networking between the different organizations and sectors (public, private and community)
  4. Institutional and Legal Framework Development (advocating for legal and regulatory changes necessary to enable organizations, institutions and agencies in all sectors to enhance their capacities)

 Current Services

  1. Self-learning support to IT trainees who wish to study towards Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certification, a vendor independent internationally recognised qualification. We provide learning material from internationally accredited agencies which the trainee can follow at his/her own pace either at home. We can even lend a Linux laptop for active earning and preparation for the examination.
  2. Periodic seminar/ workshop on information literacy and information access using the internet particularly suitable for scholars and academicians in all subject areas.
  3. Distribute both Window and Linux based popular Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) such as OpenOffice.org, a complete office suite alternative to MS Office, GIMP, a graphic programme alternative to Adobe, and other educational software. In addition, latest versions of popular Linux distribution are also distributed.
  4. We build low cost Linux system (with optimal hardware configuration) preinstalled with popular free office and productivity software customised to suit home and office computing according to one’s budget. Students, teachers and entrepreneurs on tight budget can avail this service if want to bypass the middlemen. You pay only the hardware component cost plus a small service fee.
  5. Conduct regular workshops on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) applications e.g., introduction to openoffice.org, graphics, multimedia, games and educational applications aimed at general users.
  6. Conduct regular workshops on GNU/Linux covering introduction to GNU/Linux covering configuration, program installation, and update and using the tools, cross-installation of several GNU/Linux distribution like Ubuntu, Fedora and SuSE, comparison of Linux and Windows, localization, and career opportunity.
  7. Publication of ‘Open-Source Northeast’, a publication on ‘Information Literacy’ and ‘FOSS’.

We now carry out these activities in our new facility at Open Institute for Skills, Enterprise and Lifelong Learning at Software Technology Park of India, Borjhar, Guwahati by organising seminars and workshops. We also outreach to different institutions, schools and colleges to conduct workshop and seminars.