Communications Practitioners Taking Back the Tech! @ Women'sNet

For the past two days, 3-4 December, Women'sNet hosted communications practitioners to come together and reclaim ICTs to combat violence against women and children. This workshop is part of the Take Back the Tech! campaign. Some of the activities that the practitioners were involved in include creating e-Cards, Digital story telling and creating an online dictionary.

This workshop started with discussions around lack of relevant content on cyberspaces, content that speaks to women's sexual rights, their sexuality and positive stories reflecting the work that women's organisations is doing. The practitioners indicated that they often feel that not enough documentation of activists voices is happenning.

Participants worked with themes such a sexuality/Identity and  Domestic violence to create digital stories. These are the two themes they felt that they still need to be addressing in their areas of work.

Imagine a world without ICTs

During this activity participants had to draw their worlds without ICTs and almost everyone came with a world where there is no interaction between communities, lack of knowlegde about HIV/AIDS, no way of holding government accountable for service delivery, communication extremely slow in other instances slow. The practitioners indicated the importance of ICTs in their area of work and shared their appreciation in that they are able to share knowledge, best practices and most importantly be in contact with their constituencies.

It was felt that communications is a basic right and practitioners felt that for their work to make an impact they often have to make use of ICTs. Although there are challenges, everyone agreed that the use of technology to combat violence against women and children cannot be ignored!