Staff

The 10 & 11th of September Dialogues on the "Universal Access To Female Condom... A Human Rights Issue" took place. The event was successfully hosted by the Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme or the TVEP (www.ahumanrightsissue.blogspot.com) and attended by many organisations and political affiliates, however with little key Government representation. During the sessions, presentations were given on studies reporting on how the female condom is an effective prevention method against STIs and HIV/AIDS.

On the 10th of September, I attended the Gender and Diversity seminar hosted by Constitution Hill at the Women's Gaol Lekgotla Space. The seminar, themed: "Sexuality Towards a Democratic South Africa" was attended by various representatives from lesbian gay bisexual trangernder and intersex (LGBTI) organizations.

Congratulations to all WN staff for this beautiful new website... I wish it will be seen a lot and updated often. Regarding promotion, I gathered some info that I would like to share with you... cause a website is like a video, there is no need for it to stay on the shelf, it has to be seen and promoted!!! Every successful website has target audience that makes them grow, some examples: - MySpace - target audience was English speaking U.S. teens/pre-teens - now going global and opening up to more general population.

Yesterday Vodacom launched three new speaking phones for the disabled.  The launch formed part of Vodacom's 2008 disability campaign which aims to make technology more accessible to people with specific needs.

Karen Smit, Vodacom's senior specialist together with her team is responsible for the campaign.  Being differently abled herself, she said: "gender or race cannot be changed but your ability can be changed".  Karen also spoke about the need to democratize ICTs in order to allow minority groups such as the disabled to participate in the economy.

On Monday I attended the ANC Women’s League Gauteng policy review workshop.  The purpose of the workshop was to “review the implementation of the ANC policies in government and in general with regard to women”.

On Tuesday 2 September attended a talk entitled, “Apartheid IsReal” by ANC Parliamentary Caucus Chairperson and anti-Apartheid activist Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge speak at Wits University. The event was sponsored by the Wits Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), the South African Student Congress (SASCO), the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) and the Young Communist League (YCL).

It's my first full day in Sarajevo, and today is the preparation day for the Digital Stories Training that starts tomorrow. I arrived yesterday at midday, to be met by Valintina and Sanjin from One World Platform for South East Europe (OWPSEE). It was great to see Valentina again - we have spent some time at Association for Progressive Communications (APC) meetings and events before.

Monday the 25^th of August I attended the One in Nine general elections strategy meeting in Cape Town.  The purpose of the meeting was to come up with suggestions on how One in Nine would examine the elections set for April 2009 and to propose different activities. 

The One in Nine campaign was established in 2006 as a result of the Jacob Zuma rape case. The women (and men) involved in the campaign sang daily outside of court during the trial showing their solidarity to Khwezi.

WOW! Here I am employed at Womens'Net for my 1st week and .... working.... on a Saturday: the 09th of August! Sci- Bono (www.sci-bono.co.za) is a math, science & technology discovery centre, reportedly the biggest of its kind in Africa. It held a "Women's Day" programme for school girls to interact with women experts from various science fields in math, biology, physical science & technology.

On the 15th and 16th of May i attended the Stakeholders meeting of the "Community-based Learning, ICTs and Quality-of-life (CLIQ): A participatory approach to assessing the impact of ICT access on quality-of-life in KwaZulu-Natal".

The research project is very relevant and timely - we know ICT's make an impact on peoples lives, but we have no research to demonstrate how much and under what circumstances ICTs impact on the quality of people's lives as they define it.