EWAMT 7th workshop participants

Napoleon Bonaparte once said: “let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.” The same is true for every nation. One can hope that the Rising Voices grantee from Yemen ‘Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques (EWAMT)' can make such impact. Ghaida'a al-Absi in collaboration with the Hand in Hand Initiative is organizing new media training course for female politicians, activists, and human right workers of Yemen to bring more women's voices to the internet and empower them. She shares an interesting experience gathered during the seventh workshop of the project:

On Thursday 15 October, 2009 we hold a workshop on blogging and social networking for ten activists. These activists were really talkative and full of energy. It is like a magic, every time you train new women activists, you got some energy from them.

Sadiq al-Samawi introducing Facebook

The day-long workshop anchored by Ghaida'a included tips like how to blog via email and in the afternoon session Sadiq al-Samawi taught the participants how to use facebook.

Now let us look at some of the blog posts published by the participants of the 7th workshop.

Safa writes about an important issue - the spread of drug abuse in Yemen.

Smile To Life discusses the shocking spread of AIDS and how to raise awareness to prevent this disease.

Dove creativity posts a poem called ‘silent heart‘.

Lafraaaaacp adventure defines love:

Love is when all your interest is about the happiness of your beloved without thinking of yourself.

Sarah loves the children stories and drawings and wishes to post about these.

Meanwhile here are snippets from the blogs of some of the participants of the previous workshops:

Pearl, who writes at Shells blog talks about how a women is forced to do something she does not want because she is deemed weaker in the society. She screams:

“Why don't you understand that we have the right to choose.”

Kholoud at Ambitious Project mentions about another kind of rape:

Image courtesy Kholoud

There are raped ideas .. raped success .. and even raped feelings .. usurpation of land and other types of rape. The most hideous of this is the rape of innocence .. the rape of children. Children raped and stripped from all their rights..
The right to play
To learn
To a dignified life and secure … and are locked up in a dark cave, which is located on the sidelines of life
Simply because they are created only to find themselves living a hard life.

Abeer Aeriqi shares a story how it feels betrayed by your sibling. She also posts an interesting story which has the morale that “we always suffer from severe emotional stupidity, which makes us judge things wrong.”

Eman shares the thoughts of an unsuccessful love and whether people should try over and over before giving up hope on love.

The list of participants' blogs of the EWAMT project can be found in this site.

We have noticed the young men were interested in this project, and wondered why they are excluded from joining this project. In this event we extended our contacts, also we knew that EWAMT project is popular among other NGOs and youth initiatives.

We have distributed the EWAMT brochures, and made a video about Hand in Hand Initiative activities  including EWAMT project.

The Yemeni society is very conservative and it is deeply rooted in its culture and traditions. You will see most Yemeni women wearing the black “Abaya” or “Sharshaf” (veils) and many of them prefer to stay inside the house. However women are allowed to drive and vote in Yemen. You can find women as teachers, nurses, doctors, businesswomen and journalists. Here in this video (uploaded in Dotsub by Pangea) you will see how much courage a women has to show to break the taboos of women in Yemeni society:

And the women participants of Rising Voices project EWAMT are taking bold steps to join in the conversation of equal rights and empowerment of women. Here in the EWAMT Facebook page, a discussion was initiated by instructor Jamal Nasser Al-Hanesh about the relationship of men and women in Yemen. He talks about issues like the frequent exploitation of women and deception by men and whether this is responsible for the lack of trust on men by women.

Abeer Aeriqi, who blogs at Pearl, joins the discussion saying that the men are deceptive, this message is printed in a girl's mind so the fear is normal.

Kholoud opines that it is the duty of the girl to be careful of the treachery of men. The blogger suggests the women to exercise restraint in a relation but not be afraid of men.

EWAMT Workshop Participants

Pearl writes in her Shells blog:

By pearl I mean every Yemeni woman who try to be stronger and overcome all difficulties that she face. Shells are the environment around the pearl as family (father, mother, brothers, sisters and husband) some times this shell doesn't have a flexibility so this lead to damaging of the very fine pearl but even those pearls try to have her own identity and personality whatever happen. Sea is the society which also some time make restriction on the pearl, ocean is the whole world.

So all of these things around the little pearl. Is she lucky or poor? what can she do to deal with all of these things?

She asks people to comment in her blog on this issue.

Soad atFriendship blog discusses ways to choose friends.

The EWAMT bloggers are also discussing other important issues that concern the contemporary Yemeni society.

Rahaf at Sense blog writes about the new method of beggary by employing children. Street children draw more compassion from people and that is why they are prone to exploitation by professional beggars. Aisha thinks that poverty is the main enemy of the children. However, Kholoud opines that:

Street children and the prevalence of child labor .. Is not the result of poverty or poor living conditions and economic situation, but it is in my opinion, reflect a clear picture of the problem of our identity because of the social disintegration and lack of human ties among its members.

In his opinion, this can be overcome if everyone in the community choose to help others.

Jumana describes what is forgiveness:

It is the act of letting go of the past. Forgetting the past. Moving on as if it never happened.

People hurt people everyday, they cause them a lot of pain without even realizing it. Why is that? Why are we focusing on “expressing ourselves” regardless of how it's going to make our loved ones feel. Why are we such control freaks? Why is it that we don't know how to express ourselves without hurting each other? Isn't it time we thought about different ways and approaches?

It's about time we considered each other's well being. It's about time we watched our tongues and spoke only what we've thoroughly thought about. It's about time we stopped causing each other pain and hurt.

Hopeful dreams of a romantic Yemen.

Here are some pictures from the 4th training workshop which took place in early July.

Ghaida'a al_Absi informs that Yemen is suffering from a lot of problems recently, the major ones include, power outages, Internet connection outages. The project scheduled an workshop for 9 trainees in 19-20 August, 2009. The proceedings of the first day was delayed because of a power outage (and lack of generator). The following day the Internet connection was unavailable for a long time, so the workshop had to be postponed till Thursday 27 August, 2009.

We hope that EWAMT will overcome these challenges and bring more Yemeni women in the global conversation which will help them empower themselves.

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.

The aim of this project is to obtain the Yemeni Activists in Civil and political Society in the capital city of Yemen, the skills of creating blogs as a new mass media to express their points of view, and how to use the blogs in publicizing the social affairs. (press release)

We are delighted to report that the first round of training workshops has been completed recently.

Finding a suitable venue was a challenge. But the project found a suitable venue, a hall in an NGO called “All Girls Association”. Ghaida'a said:

It is really good to find a hall in association just for women because Yemen is conservative society, and females prefer to have the training in femininity environment.

The first workshop took place during 20-21st of May 2009 with 14 participants. Among the trainers were Jamal Nasser Al-Hanesh and Ghaida’a al-Absi.

Participants with Ghaida'a Al-Absi

Ghaida'a reports:

We started at 9:00 am. [..]

On the First day of training we covered the following topics:

1- Creation of blogs in blogger

2- Morals of blogging

3- How to publicize the blog

4- Discussion about blogging and how we can advocate our issues through blogging.

In the following day we covered these topics:

1- Adding pictures and video from youtube to the blogs

2- Adding calendar to the blogs

3- Orientation about social network and the trainees created Facebook accounts and joined the EWAMT Project group in Facebook.

At the end of the last day, we took a group pictures, and said goodbye to each other; promised to keep in touch through the blog or Facebook.

Here are more photos of the workshop:

Jamal was the only male present in that training.

He expressed his reactions:

it was nice training the girls were wonderful and i am so happy to work with them. i was the only man there so u can imagine what happened ?????
ha ha ha ha ha

In this video some Yemeni women activists voiced their opinions in Arabic language (please help us transcribe and translate):

The project will be divided into two phases. On each phase about 100 women activists will be taught how to use blogs. The second workshop of the first phase is scheduled to take place during 27-28th of May, 2009. Please stay tuned for more updates.

[Image courtesy EWAMT photo stream]

The Republic of Yemen is an Arab country of more than 23 million people located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. It is the only republic on the Arabian Peninsula (not led by a hereditary monarch) and is one of the poorest countries of the region. Its capital is Sana'a and the language is Arabic. Yemen is so often ignored by the international media and people know little about the country. With an internet penetration of less than 2% we do not usually get alternative perspectives from the citizen journalists. This has so often led to stereotyping of Yemenis.

For example Yemenis enjoy some unique freedom as an expat blogger Jalilah informs:

The veiling of women is not law in Yemen as it is in Saudi Arabia. Many younger, educated women merely cover their heads, but not their faces, and some do not veil at all. Those who do, do so in deference to tradition, not to law. [..]

Yemeni Arabic is quite different from other Arabic dialects and the women additionally speak a dialect all their own. I later learned that this was to insure more privacy and to avoid being understood by the men!

Women constitute only 30 percent of the Yemeni workforce and approximately 70 percent of women in Yemen are illiterate. The gap between men and women is very wide in terms of political empowerment and economic participation but the literacy rate is not that different from men. Various social, religious and political factors are responsible for women's low status (source) and women rarely have the platforms to voice their opinions.

But the Yemeni women are fighting back. For example, Yemeni women activists are fighting against the fundamentalists to prove that Islam does not contradict the use of contraceptives an family planning. But these activities are not much visible to the world. It is the high time when they start to harness the power of internet to help spread their activism and widen their campaigns.

Ghaida'a Al Absi plans to change the situation with a Rising Voices micro grant. She writes in her blog:

Human rights are being violated in many countries of the world, particularly developing countries, but there are a lot of people do not tolerate it and is trying to promote what is happening in their countries and to the whole world […] But..Yemen has several cases of gross human rights violations are not known to the world, and because of the weakness of civil society institutions and their lack of knowledge of right-wing.

In the project proposal Ghaida'a mentioned that her goal is:

to prepare and conduct a training course in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen. The project will focus on the Politicians women and the women workers in the field of Human Rights. In addition, the main objective of the project is to strengthen the capacity of those women to be able to express their own thoughts through the Internet. The training course will be conducted monthly for four days, two hours a day.

The targeted community is the activists women who work in politics or in the field of human rights. The trainings will give the targeted community the ability to use Internet in order to publish their point of views, documenting their activities and will give them the space to publish the issues they are fighting for.

Now let us learn more about Ghaida'a. She works at the SOUL Organization for Women and Children Development as WIT program assistant. The WIT (Women in Technology) program is about empowering Women in Technology. She is also doing some voluntary work in the organization like preparing training sessions in various topics for the Yemeni girls in WIT Forum.

Ghaida'a at work. Photo courtesy Ghaida'a Al Absi

She is also a volunteer in Yemeni Observatory for Human Rights, and the founder and coordinator of the Hand in hand Initiative, which is which is a forum of a group of youths engaged in raising awareness and rehabilitation of young people to make them able to change the future for the better, through education, information and capacity-building. In addition, she is a member of the MEPI Alumni.

We interviewed her recently in Germany at a conference on new media activism in the Middle East. In this interview she introduces herself and discusses the contents of the workshops, the challenges the project will face, and what she expects from the Rising Voices community.

The contents of the curriculum of this project will cover the use of Internet in publishing the issues concerning the activists and will be generated by three experts (including Ghaida'a) in new media. The guide will be in Arabic language, and will be arranged in handouts to be distributed to the targeted community.

The participants will be taught to create blogs to document their activities, voice their opinions and create a community of activists.

We are eager to follow the activities of the “Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques” project and wish its success.

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While at a conference in Germany about new media activism in the Middle East, Ghaidaa al-Absi sat down with Rezwan and Sami Ben Gharbia to discuss her vision for the Yemen-based Rising Voices grantee project “Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques”.