# Interim report for APC. collecting points

**Towards a narrative report**

While the city, the town and the villages where we work shutdown and we started working from home, a number of activities intensified. We switched to daily online team meetings at a regular hour that is convinient to all and this helped us being connected and to share and listen to each other. We soon noticed we and our friends were all very busy with many webinars on many topics of interest. Months have gone by by now staying home online and reflecting on activities of the past year and the future.

The lockdown was overnight and drastic in India. The announced lockdown was for a few weeks initially (later came to be called "lockdown stage 1"), not unlike in other places around the world. As it extended to stage 2, there was considerable panic among the daily wage and short term contractual job seekers. India became know for stories of "reverse migrants" walking hundreds to thousands of miles home as all carriage of personal was disallowed.

Work at our craft center and the village came to a halt as the master crafts people had returned to their home towns just days before the lockdown. Its eight months now and still there is no sign of normalcy at the craft center. Villagers who have small land holdings are less affected as over the weeks the farm produce could reach the near by towns. Most other needs were served by large companies, often international ones such as Amazon, and food deliveries such as Swiggy. The effect of this is that most of the small producers have shut shop even after eight months of the Pandemic. The community radio setup in the village had stopped just before the lockdown as our young radio jockeys eloped one day - while "express yourself" we had said, we had to be sensitive to the families and the village.

We thank APC for the much needed contingency support, that helped us attend to some of the following activities - in particular those that required support thanks to lockdown, from relief to community network activities.

* Girish mobile van
* Community Radio, TVS school students broadcast from home during lockdown, Radio Van Village radio on wheels (Covid awareness at villages) https://www.namdu1radio.com/ Newspaper article on this: https://www.deccanherald.com/special-features/travelling-radio-has-villagers-tuning-in-for-covid-19-news-835261.html


* Kanniah
* Introducing Jondu/bullrush grass to migrant workers at Kothanur bangalore

* Education and webinar Pi
* [Raste Pehchaano toh Sapne Bhi Pehchaan loge ](https://www.notion.so/Raste-Pehchaano-toh-Sapne-Bhi-Pehchaan-loge-d3b7e8cf2757452dbbcdae69822b2922)
* [Suno Suno / Heeli Keeli - Vocal for Local](https://hackmd.io/@sagesalus/SyTUZmKoU)

* Sharing of lockdown stories
* https://files.janastu.org/s/9cJLqZaKkb9WWM4

#### Milli Sessions - International Archives Week
Our intent was for these sessions to be informal and to nurture conversations around different aspects of archives. It was run from 8th June to 14th June.

Following which some members of our team have started a larger collective to explore linked archives, their extendibility through annotation and their recontextualisation through narration, storytelling and juxtaposition. (https://hackmd.io/@tbdinesh/H1jAk1V28)
* Lockdown relief efforts (thanks to friends' contributions)
* Strategy to carry our work remotely: cloud servers, mesh mash with hot spots, webinar pi, tools

---

1) Experimented tools on (Raspberry) Pi such as syncthing, yggdrasil, jitsi, bigbluebutton, nextcloud, maptales, papad, Maaya and Kolibri

> ### Tools Explanation
>
> #### What is Syncthing
> [Syncthing](https://syncthing.net/) is a continuous file synchronization program. It synchronizes files between two or more computers in real time, safely protected from prying eyes. Your data is your data alone and you deserve to choose where it is stored, whether it is shared with some third party, and how it's transmitted over the internet.
>
> * The following link is to download the Syncthing on Desktop/Laptop
> https://syncthing.net/downloads/

> * The following link is made available to download Syncthing on android over wi-fi and mobile data
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y_HSn0GrwYyXSqBiraUehj4mYTA1_eys/view?usp=drivesdk
>

> #### What is Yggdrasil
>
> [Yggdrasil](https://yggdrasil-network.github.io/) an early stages implementation of a fully end-to-end encrypted IPv6 network. It is lightweight, self-arranging, supported on multiple platforms and allows pretty much any IPv6-capable application to communicate securely with other Yggdrasil nodes.
> https://cryptpad.fr/code/#/2/code/edit/a8IpbwLEp+lCYRnF8LlgjozI/
> #### jitsi, bigbluebutton and nextcloud
> Application layer managed by tech admins for setting up of open source software and services. ex. File Sharing, Database as services, Video conference bridge, Audio bridge, Ecommerce portals, Email service, Social Media, DNS server and more…
> #### Maptales
> This [Maptales](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ie0EZqCICc7pAiyCBc1WQjctyBFD7A-0DK6-J0irx3Y/edit#heading=h.2cd8dvpegj6t) is a software design document that captures the system requirements and discusses the overall architecture of the system. The system in question is one designed for creating, publishing and consuming locative media. Locative media is media, text, audio, video, that has been geo-located. There are multiple types of locative media currently available, such as the KML files coming from the ‘Follow the sheep’ project.
> #### Papad
> [Papad](http://papad.pantoto.org/) an application designed to listen and tag audio files by a CR station community. These tags (the meta information) can then be used to search, sort and share a large collection of audio files – eg., when community calls a CR station and leaves messages in large numbers, or when a CR Station wants to put their program content out so that the community can listen to it and also categorize it for their own convenience. To quote in one line, the tool is a community-oriented content curation for audio files.
> #### Maaya
> [Maaya](https://janastu.github.io/maaya/) is a class of utilities to generaate a AV presentation from Images, Audio and subtitles.
> #### Kolibri
> Kolibri makes high quality education technology available in low-resource communities such as rural schools, refugee camps, orphanages, non-formal school systems, and prison systems.
> * [Kolibri user interface](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RPTDO0SUvrraVxUkyLnA5XBj7C0DoSbkFbOacien45o/edit?usp=sharing)
> * [Kolibri studio channel creation](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tNEwPNyQpJCoE83wv_dbmj_S8aVPx6oEPlbwu2tMHvg/edit?usp=sharing)

3) started collecting lockdown stories from the collegues and CN area
* https://files.janastu.org/s/9cJLqZaKkb9WWM4?path=%2FLockdown_stories
4) Migrant stories
* Some migrant situation stories: http://sync.janastu.org has audio files of what migrants from Gorakhpur, UP are saying. https://photos.app.goo.gl/rtm8n9MRJDXk69MY9
5) storytelling project planning - storycorps, storymaps
* Narrative content: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/feb2631eb3ea489eb019ffb8282396f6
6) Meeting Khaniah and migrants groups from UP who were stuck in bangalore - no work. ideas on providing employment opportunities.
* https://hackmd.io/xk6BXVcuTu6ssT7v4gt3TQ
8) Mask making activity at the CN area
* Masks http://j.mp/masks4india
9) Helping connected people to provide emergency food etc. Disinformation and covid infodemic handling.
* https://files.janastu.org/s/j3mDnzm8ya2cgzb?path=%2Ffood-distribution
11) Girish's radio for local info delivery
* [Video of Community Radio and Bamboo tower setup](https://tbdinesh-drive.mycozy.cloud/public?sharecode=B2nbAR3rnn6f#/) at Garkiyur/Karikkaiyur village near Kotagiri, TN
13) Covid-19 campaign- Namma Halli Radio
* Travelling radio has villagers tuning in for [Covid-19 news](https://hackmd.io/kJKrJEo3Qq6Ps9BsUc1FOw?view)
14) invited people to host webinars on Covid-19 - awareness
* Kannada renarration of Dr. Dave Price experience. https://public.janastu.org/Covid-19/Dr Daveprice Info 2020.mp3
* Namdu1Radio interaction Achutha Rao, Girish using community radio van https://files.janastu.org/s/ieSpaWcm2WH8NdQ