Tuesday 27 October 2015

NATC celebrates Haresh's 51st birthday

We celebrated our Head of Operations birthday with a small office party. 

I (Farzana Rasheed) baked 2 cakes last night - a cookie layer cake with purple cream cheese frosting and a chocolate ganache - and for food we had 4 scrumptious pizzas from our neighbours, Monroe Chicken. 

Our office staff (sadly minus our 2 senior technies who were busy on site), our partners at Unified Concepts and other friends joined us and made our day! 

Kavita of course enjoyed the most!





The ladies of NATC: Rita, Christiana, Musu and Kavita

Rukshan and Luca admire Kavita's mask
Wonder what is the present?

Staff write glowing birthday wishes 
The star of the party: the purple birthday cake!
Blow the candles out my dear and make your wish come true!

In line for the purple birthday cake: Rukshan, Luca, Elena, Musu,
Kavita, Christiana and Lee
A long time friend of Haresh's family and mentor,
Mr. Edward Zelee w
ho graced the party withis presence
Recipe from here.
The 51-year old young Head of Operations poses withis staff
Group photo!
Last piece of cake for me!

Tuesday 20 October 2015

Maintaining NATC's Facebook page

Updating NATC's Facebook page is challenging and fun. 

I always knew I wanted NATC to have a Facebook page and, have been maintaining a page since 2010. 

What to post every day? Do we have daily news to share? Are we taking enough photographs to be able to post something new regularly? 

NATC is not a retail company so we do not have new products on our shelf to talk about. We provide services and products to offices. The nature of our work entails work on site and also trouble shooting at our lab. The photo opportunities are then on site and sometimes at our lab. For this, I often have to ask my staff to take photos on site which they remember to do most of the time. At the lab at the office, I myself try to take photos of staff in action.









We have also had several company shoots taken by a professional photographer which have been featured on our Facebook page.



Besides that, I regularly scour the Internet for news under various headings: IT, Science and Technology News, Africa, Asia, Infrastructure, Energy, etc. By doing so, I have started to stay on top of the latest news and, hopefully folks on our page also enjoy reading some interesting articles.

The Technology pages I frequently source news from are:

BBC Technology 
Guardian Technology 
Tech Crunch 
Scroll Science and Technology 
New Yorker Science and Technology 
NDTV Gadgets 360
BiztechAfrica The voice of Africa's ICT sector
Technology News The Guardian Nigeria
CNET News

I try to also look for interesting images on the Internet to share on our page depending on day of the week



time of the day


share IT cartoons




share IT Memes



post Comic Strips

I even found a comic strip - "Titi Co"- on BiztechAfrica The voice of Africa's ICT sector that is funny and relevant and I often post the cartoons on our page


find amusing office humour


and even look for art and technology



I even made some Memes of our own







To date, we have almost 600 Likes on our page. If the objective of our social media is to build an online community of our clients, potential customers, folks interested in IT and Liberia and wider Africa, we need to do better.

The next challenge is to figure out how we can get existing clients to be part of our online community and to use social media to reach the market.

Thursday 8 October 2015

Hi Everyone!

By Rita J. Gailor


Left to Right: Rita, Kavita and Farzana 


Rita J. Gailor is my name. I am a Liberian. My Dad's name is Everett B Gailor Sr. and he is from Grand Cape Mount County while my mom's name is Mary W Gailor and she’s from Sinoe County.  

I am from a family of eight (8), that includes my parents. I am the last born among my siblings. 

I traveled to Ghana at the age of (10) ten years with my immediate family on a resettlement program in the year 2000. We sat for an interview and did not make it. This led to my stay in Ghana. My stay in Ghana wasn’t an easy one. My family and I struggle through out just to make life since my parents had no job at that time. 

I graduated 2008 from Wisdom Academy in Kasoa Cp Last Stop. After I completed 2008 I wasn’t financially fit to enter a university at the time. I was home not going to school and not working also. 

One day my older brother told me about an NGO called Respect Ghana who had a computer school and was offering free computer courses. He made inquiries about the school and that was how I enroll into the school through the encouragement of my brother. I started the school but could not complete due to   the decision made by the administration. The administration decided to close the school down because they wanted to transfer the organization back home. During the period I spent at the school I learned Microsoft Word and started learning Excel when the administration made that decision. 

Because of how good our teacher was, I started gaining interest and decided to complete the Microsoft package. I told my parents and big brother about it and they embraced the idea. I went to a school called Prosperity Computer  School to make inquiries then I saw that the fees was affordable. I started with the Microsoft package again, after completing Microsoft, I saw that I grew more interested in learning computer courses. 

Seeing my self-making some birthday cards, certificate and other graphics work using Microsoft word and Publisher, I then decided to forward by doing some graphic courses like Corel Draw and Photo Shop. After that graphic course I took pride in learning more but I never had the hands to continue to a higher level, so I registered for sewing classes because I wanted to do something instead of sitting home. 

Right after my first two (2) months in the sewing school I had the opportunity to continue my computer education at Aptech Computer Education located at Dankuman Junction, Accra. I went with the mind set of doing Database but I learnt Html, Database, and Dreamweaver among others. 

I completed and came back to Liberia November 24 2013. 

January 2014 I had the opportunity to work at the National Election Commission in their Data Center as a Data Analyst, Quality control staff and a tally Clerk during the 2014 Senatorial Election processes as a contractor. 

I applied for a position of a data clerk through the Mercy Corps Apprenticeship program and I was linked to this noble institution (NATC) to serve as a trainee which I see as a great opportunity to achieve my goals of becoming one of Liberia's successful Female IT Persons.  

Presently I am at The New Africa Technology Company as a trainee through the Mercy Corps Apprenticeship program. 

I want to say a big thanks to Mercy Corps and the Administration of NATC for this great opportunity of another step forward in achieving my goals.