In 2009, The Technical centre for Agricultural and Rural cooperations introduced CTA’s Internship and Young professional officers programmes.  The Centre offers the beneficiaries of the program the opportunity to acquire practical experience related to their  professional backgrounds and aspirations.

How it all began

During CTA’s 2009 annual seminar which was also her 25^th anniversary, I was privilledged to meet the biggest percentage of the CTA team  in Brussels-Belgium including Mr. Giacomo Rambaldi my current Remote trainer and Mentor.  Being a trained Citizen journalist, I did not waste any precious time but decided to join the various web 2.0 platforms that were being used to share information about the seminar and anniversary. Twitter was my favorite platform. I spent most of my time tweeting and re-tweeting until the day I was set to make a presentation on behalf of WOUGNET entitled “”.

The entire idea of web 2.0 tools was “News” to majority of the participants. After the presentation, I had the privilege to share my passion for web 2.0 tools and new media with CTA’s Senior programme Coordinator/ICT and Innovation Mr Giacomo Rambaldi.

After a discussion with WOUGNET coordinator Dr. Dorothy Okello during the CTA observatory Workshop in Netherlads, it was agreed that I should be recruited  as the first remote CTA intern.

What the Distance Mentorship Covers.

During the internship period, it is believed that Knowledge and skills will be acquired via remote coaching and hands-on practice. The distance mentorship programme  covers  the following topics:

·         Use of SharePoint remote collaboration platform to store and exchange data related to this programme (Microsoft Office environment)

·         Use of Joomla (CMS); e.g. publish ready edited content

·         Monitor and improve visibility and ranking of websites. This includes SEO assessments, registration on search engines and online directories, planned crawling, establishment of reciprocating links, use of WebRings and other

·         Improve dissemination of online products. This involves the posting of short announcements on selected portals, social tagging and tweeting. Content will be provided by CTA.

·         Moderate and animate the exchanges on the Web2forDev DGroup

·         Transcribing  and translating videos  on dotsub.

My experience.

Being a remote intern had never occurred to me. I did not know that such a “thing” existed, being trained and mentored online using a number of tools. When CTA offered me this opportunity, I was so eager to find out what “remote” internship entails.  I must say that, six months into the internship, I have no regrets at all. The benefits are overwhelming and opportunities keep increasing.

Ø  I have understood the power of the internet and the benefits it can offer when properly used.

Ø  I have learnt about many more web 2.0 tools and how they work. This has made it possible for me to use the skills for WOUGNET.

Ø  Being a trained citizen Journalsit, I am putting into use the practical skills like blogging, tweeting , skyping among others.

Thanks to The Technical centre for Agricultural and Rural cooperations ,CTA’s Internship and Young professional officers programme for giving the youth like me an opportunity to maximize on the potential I have in relation to new and digital Media.

Maureen Agena

Remote Intern

Affiliated to the CTA Distance Mentorship Programme

Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation ACP-EU

P.O. Box 380, NL 6700AJ Wageningen, The Netherlands