Rising Voices grantee Empowerment of Yemeni Women Activists in New Media Techniques (EWAMT) has organized two more workshops in June. After the success of the first workshop in May, the project received requests from many NGOs to include their candidates in the next workshops. Even some enthusiastic men accused of discrimination as the workshops are available only for women. Ghaida'a al_Absi, the EWAMT project leader writes:

I did not expect to have this large number of girls who want to have the knowledge of blogging and social networks, so we enforced to looking for a volunteer to be just responsible for receiving these emails and registration.

In 3-4 June, 2009 we hold our second workshop for 10 activists from various NGOs at Youth Economic Development Center. This time we had added energizing exercises to the workshop, and the trainer Basheer al-Samawy made some funny exercises to the trainees.

Ghaida'a continues:

In the next day, we finished the other techniques in blogging then we made discussion in which way we will use our blogs to serve our community. We gave them examples of Yemeni bloggers and showed them their blogs. Moreover, we talked about face book and YouTube, and they all made account in face book and joined the EWAMT group in facebook.

The third workshop was completed during 17-18th of June. Here is a slide show of the pictures taken during the worshop:

The Yemeni society is conservative, and many families do not accept the photo of their daughters to be published. But some of the members were brave enough to be photographed.

Here is a list of the blogs opened during the first workshop:

• Or Illaftrain by أم إيلاف
• Rights and freedoms in Yemen – Group Blog
• 2jayzworld by Jumana
• Yemeni Notes by Ebtisam Al-Mohmmdy
• You And Your Home by Bushra
• Dewdrops by صديقة الورود
• Yemen Al-Saeed by Huda
• Powerful by Alaqwiyaa
• Shells by Pearl
• Life Maker Foundation Yemen – Group Blog
• Rose by Flowers
• We are the youth of today by Princess

Here is the list of blogs from the second workshop:

• Man by انسان
• Ambitious project by Kholoud
• Capacity constraints in the creative by قدراتي
• Sense by Rahaf
• Pearl beads by Abeer Aeriqi
• Our Environment by باسمك نحيا
• Our by Lena
• Beautiful One by Haifa'a
• Friendship by Soad

Here are some more blogs by EWAMT members and facilitators:

• Lamya Sky by Lamya
• Moon Candles by Tears in the sunset
• Tips by رجاوي
• Your health the most important by Hopeful
• Lines by Albatool
• alsnnono by dommo3 (shorouq alnono)
• Meet by Smart
• Prospects by Paths
• across by Jamal

There has been a number of blog posts published in the above mentioned blogs from Yemen. I will try to highlight some of them. But please check out these in details including their project blog using any web based translation tool like Google Translate.

Huda writes about the flow of large number of Somalian refugees in Yemen and the negligence of the authorities to address their plights.

Soad is delighted to participate in the workshop:

Trained, thanks to the excellent training and I benefited a lot. I wish to be an active participant in this blog and thank you very much.

She also writes in own blog about personal friendship. Life Maker Foundation Yemen writes about addiction in Yemen.

Lena writes about the rights of children to live safely. Rahaf discusses what it means to be a street children.

Bushra writes how to grow confidence of your kids.

Jumana writes in English about her perception of Islam in the USA.