In a post titled “Girls and the Revolution,” some of the women share their thoughts on the uprising that took place in the first part of 2010 across Egypt. Salma wrote:

Nadia wrote:

Blogging workshops in Minya

As the recent uprising had pushed more Egyptians to think about and discuss politics, Warda Fahmy, another woman from Dawadeyya village, shared her reflections on political participation [ar] by women living in the rural countryside:

Rural life in Dawadeyya village

Others used the digital blogging platform to discuss more personal and sensitive issues. A girl anonymously shared her painful experience in a post titled “My Experience with Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) [ar],” who wrote:

In another post tackling reproductive health and stigma entitled “Problems with Infertility [ar],” the women shared the following thoughts:

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For these three videos, we also utilized the Universal Subtitles platform to add subtitles in English. The collaborative platform allows for additional languages to easily be added, and we invite readers to add subtitles in additional languages.

The second video features the Women of Minya Day by Day project led by Nevine Fahem, who has been working with young women from the rural regions of the El Minya governorate.

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The community bade farewell to the outgoing Director of Outreach, David Sasaki and welcomed the new Director Eduardo Ávila.

This year Rising Voices, in collaboration with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, awarded microgrant funding of up to €2500 to three Egyptian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to train citizen media to underrepresented groups in Egypt so that they can voice their opinions.

Now let us look at some of the notable news of the grantees community we featured in the Rising Voices website in 2010.

Featured Bloggers:

Throughout the year we interviewed bloggers from different Rising Voices projects and here is a list of those features.

Shinetsetseg (Shinee) Sukhbaatar

• Shinetsetseg (Shinee) Sukhbaatar from Nomad Green Project in Mongolia
• Olzod Boum-Yalagch from Nomad Green Project in Mongolia
• Saki Golafale from Ceasefire Liberia project in Liberia
• Nat Nyuan-Bayjay from Ceasefire Liberia project in Liberia
• Nora Catalina Urquijo from HiperBarrio project in Colombia
• Yesenia Corrales from HiperBarrio project in Colombia
• Edgar Andres Yana Lisme from Voces Boliviana in Bolivia
• Getutza from Blogging The Dreams Project in Romania
• Tahina Rakotomanarivo from FOKO in Madagscar
• Ahmed Awadalla from Exploring Taboos project in Egypt
• Randa AbulDahab from the Women of Minya Day by Day project in Egypt
• Sara Abd Al-Maktari from the Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques (EWMAT) project in Yemen
• Award Winning OLPC (XO) laptops Bloggers from Uruguay - Part 1, Part 2

The New Grantees Of 2010:

• Introduction to Exploring Taboos Project
• Introduction to Mokattam Blog Tales
• Introduction to Women of Minya Day by Day

Barcamps And Conferences:

Otgonsuren Jargal presenting Nomad Green at the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 in Chile. Image by Krzysztof Pawliszak/GV. CC BY

The Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2010 took place in May at Santiago Public Library in the capital of Chile. Four Rising Voices projects were presented during the two days of the summit. Here is a two part report (Part 1, Part 2) highlighting the presentations and the reactions from the members who attended the conference.

Photo of Catalina Restrepo speaking at BarCamp Santa Cruz. Photo used with permission by BarCampSCZ.

Catalina Restrepo of the HiperBarrio project in Medellín, Colombia was invited to speak at BarCamp Santa Cruz, Bolivia in January. The event also featured Hugo Miranda of Voces Bolivianas from Bolivia.

This year members of HiperBarrio were invited to the Campus Party in Colombia and was told to do something different, use the pin hole camera technique to record the activities of CampusBlog.

Contests:

In February the Best Of Malagasy Blogs (BOMBS) 2009 awards were announced. Several bloggers from FOKO, the Rising Voices grantee in Madagascar, won the awards.

Empowerment Of Women:

With the help of a Rising Voices microgrant, the project “Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques” is teaching blogging to female politicians, activists, and human right workers in Yemen to bring them in global conversation.

Ghaida'a Al Absi, the project leader, says: “EWAMT project is like a candle with other candles, which are lighting up the darkness in Yemen.”

Blogger Ahmad Awadalla of “Exploring Taboos” project conducts sexuality education workshops in Egypt and wrote about discussions about the topic of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) with his students.

Language:

Ruben Hilary of Voces Bolivianas project, with some local volunteers of El Alto, Bolivia, established the virtual community Jaqi Aru. The goal of the Jaqi Aru website is highlighting and spreading Aymara language in internet through creation of digital media contents, which involves translation, use of multimedia and social media tools.

Culture, Travel And Lifestyle:

Bus shaped balloon at the Festival de globos de La Loma 2010

The citizen journalists of the Rising Voices grantee Hiperbarrio shared some photos and videos of the Balloon festival of La Loma (Festival de globos de La Loma 2010).

Nine citizen journalists from Nomad Green in Mongolia visited Taiwan to learn more about Taiwan's social and environmental issues and local cultures and receive citizen media training.

Sustainability:

Hiperbarrio from Colombia finally got its legal identity this year as a nonprofit corporation. This allows the organization to continue to grow as they can be hired by public and private institutions for outreach activities. According to an agreement between the EPM Foundation Network and HiperBarrio from Colombia, citizen media outreach activities in 3 new communities in 3 libraries of Medellín (Villatina, La Esperanza and EPM) were started in 2010.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation awarded Ceasefire Liberia project a $10,000 grant to start a new arm called Ceasefire. This project will focus on creating a citizen media project for African immigrant and African-American youth in Staten Island based on the Ceasefire Liberia model.

Thanks to the bloggers of the different projects of Rising Voices we could read many stories from Liberia, Madagascar, Ivory Coast, Mongolia, Romania, Colombia, Yemen, Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Bolivia, Ukraine, Uruguay, etc. Some Rising Voices bloggers also participated in and contributed for the Blog Action Day 2010 and the One Day On Earth initiatives. We hope to continue hearing from them. The ‘Introduction to Global Citizen Media Guide' has been translated in Macedonian and Albanian.

We wish the members of the Rising Voices Community and our readers a happy and prosperous 2011.

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Randa AbulDahab (front) and other women from the New Women Foundation

Audio podcast:

Rising Voices: First, please introduce yourself, and tell us about your role in “Women of Minya Day by Day” project.

Randa AbulDahab: My name is Randa AbulDahab, I started working in civil society since 2001. At first, I worked with New Women Foundation, and then I left them for quite a long time. During that time, I traveled to work in the civil society in Italy, and then other institutes in Egypt. Later on, I returned again to NWF, but changed my category of work. At first I used to work in social studies concerning violence against women, and domestic violence; the feminist movement in general. When I returned to NWF, I wanted to work more with the electronic space. Therefore, I worked with the team responsible for the foundation’s website. Also, I went to study cinema for a year, and made few short films. Therefore I wanted to mix both things together, working with video and in civil society.

As for “Women of Minya day by day” project, my colleague Nevine Ebide in NWF, read the announcement for the Rising Voices grant to fund small media projects. She thought about the idea, and suggested if I’d give sessions about video editing and photography. I was so enthusiastic about the idea. Nevine always have some great ideas, that you feel you want to take part in it – despite the too much effort you will have to put in. She told me that I will have to go to Minya, I told her there is no problem at all. And from there I started working in the project.

RV: During your work in NWF, what are the projects you took part in and left unforgettable impression on you?

RA: There were two projects I worked on at the same time. They were two very important projects to me. The first one was about TV drama. Studying women social roles represented in such drama and different forms of discrimination women may face like violence or limiting some jobs to be only done by men. The second project was about the definition of “Women private space”. We were trying to find out if “private space” for women means house and family only, or work and her life outside house. There was also another part in this project, where I had to meet some important figures of women movement in Egypt, also workers in civil society who work on improving women status in the society.

Randa leading a workshop in Minya

RV: Since you are a blogger, I wanted to know whether you think blogging can help improve the social problems? Even on individual level?.. of course by blogging I mean all forms of new technology tools, audio, video.. etc

RA: I won’t deny that only a small percentage of the entire Egyptian population has access to the internet. However, at least you can reach a certain category in the society that has access to the internet and also interested in the topics you are discussing. Or even at least, you can reach a decision maker. A while ago we had a campaign in NWF in favor of women becoming judges, and it was somehow a campaign for the elite, however, it attracted normal people who have no feminist orientations. They were keen to know what it means to have a woman working as a judge, and whether or not this is against religion as it is widely spread.

RV: This will take me back to another point. You previously said that you worked for a while in the civil society in Italy. So what are the differences you observed between the civil society in Egypt and Italy?

RA: Look, I had a chance for an internship through the European Union to work in an organization called “Voluntarious” that deals with 5 major projects, mainly, illegal refugees, political refugees, and underage refugees. The difference I observed was mainly about how people believe in the causes they are defending. Do they really want to work on such issues because they honestly believe in it, or it’s just a way or making a living?.. Let me not say making a living, but let’s call it because that’s the trend nowadays. Somehow, people in Italy were honest about the causes they were advocating, and that’s why they were working on it.

Also in Egypt, and I’ve seen that in my life, we have a confused understanding about volunteerism in general. It is always assumed you volunteer only when you have nothing else to do in your life, therefore anyone can abuse you the way they like.

A volunteer is a person who is giving away part of his time, which means he has other things to do in his life. Also, since he is a volunteer, then I should do whatever possible to make the job comfortable to him. I can for instance buy a bus ticket for him to come to my institute, or even buy him a meal, if he’s going to work at lunch time. But that’s not in Egypt, regretfully. There is this condescending look towards volunteers. Plus, sometimes some institutes act as if they don’t really know what they can do with a volunteer. They advertise that they need volunteers, but they don’t have a plan how to make good use of them. I’ve observed that throughout my life. No one tries to understand my capabilities and what I am ready to give.

RV: In Egypt, utilizing human resources in general does have a problem; whether that is volunteering or non-volunteering work. I feel that we have unchangeable idea about work. We don’t try to be creative about it, or make right use of people’s capabilities in the right place.

RA: There is also another difference but that lies on the volunteer himself. Sometimes it is taken lightly. So a volunteer would go to do a certain job, but he puts it as a last priority in his life.

RV: For “Women of Minya day by day” project. What are the stories you heard and felt this project is meant for these ones specifically?

RA: Mainly stories about these women’s daily life. You will find them on our blog. One of them about a woman who had to walk 2 kilometers to a hospital to cure her injured child. When she went to the hospital, they cured him yes, however, they didn’t allow her to take him back unless she brings money! I know much about private and public hospitals, but never imagined it would reach this level to hold a 5 year-old boy for such trivial amount of money. Another story is about Mariam, who was a widow for the second time, then married an old man. A third story about the girl who wanted to get married to someone from her village, however her father decided not to allow except a marriage from certain tribes in Upper Egypt.

RV: But I feel that such project is not meant to help such cases in particular, however may be to stop them to happen again.

RA: Till now, my idea about the project, that it is offering a tool that people don’t know, and yet if they can make good use of it, it may change many things in their lives.

RV: So what type of responses you receive from participants, especially that most of them are not well educated.

RA: Till now there is impressive response, which I didn’t even imagine. When I was first told that I will teach 10 to 15 females, I thought maybe 2 or 3 would respond positively. However, out of 15 I found 10 or 12 active ones. Also the response is seen during training, I don’t have to wait till the training ends. Like, you may find girls asking you to repeat because they don’t understand how to make a hyperlink. Or they would ask you to clarify the meaning of some technical words. Of course I try to use simple language, that’s why I am thinking to make a manual that has pictures more than words.

I remember last time they were asking me, “so what should we do till next time?”. I advised them to photograph each other. They themselves were searching for things to do in preparation for next time. This is some of the positive responses I received.

RV: You only carried out single workshop?

RA: Well we did it once, but on 3 days. And every day there were two of us there to give 2 different sessions. My colleague Dina Maghraby, worked on photography. My colleague Nevine worked on teaching them emailing and blogging. And currently, as I told you, we are putting a plan with a main concern about simplifying information even more. So we are working on the picture manual.

RV: What are the most significant obstacles you faced during implementing the project?

RA: Reaching the place is one obstacle. But we were trying to work on it. Either we’d go to the village itself, or participants would meet us in another middle place, outside the village. Other thing is that some participants bring their children with them to the training sessions. Of course we were terrified of that, but we tried some set up in sessions so that participants can bring in their children, without also being distracted with them crying or so.

RV: The question that always confuses me, because of my knowledge of the countryside way of living in Egypt. But I do not imagine how a family or a husband can allow their females to attend such training, which they may think teaches useless stuff.

RA: That was expected to happen of course. However, the idea was introduced to them as “you will come to know more about computers and how to use new technology”. But I think, apart from that, the much stronger obstacle was the fear of using technology itself.

There is something I’ve also noticed, and I think it made it easier for women to participate. Most of the women who joined us share in bread winning for the family, therefore they have a say. One of them works with builders, another one sells vegetables in the market. There are also two women who has higher education, one of them is a house wife but she took 2 years diploma in computers, therefore for her, it was easy to convince her husband to come – though still her background about computers was very limited. Some of them also used other people who have say in the village to convince their families.

RV: The last question would certainly be about your hopes and wishes for the project for the coming near future.

RA: Well, you can say this is a general dream of mine, which is to technologically empower all Egyptian women. Even educated ones who can use the internet to check Facebook and Twitter, etc but still their participation in programming for instance is very narrow, not even equal to men. So my dream is that all Egyptian women deal with technology effectively. It is not difficult at all, but it just needs some training or continuous friction with the tools to get used to it.

For “Women of Minya Day by Day” project, I really wish we’d honestly care for women in the countryside. With all my due respect to all the researches, reports.. etc, but women in the countryside are the category of Egyptians who live in the most disastrous conditions. It’s no longer enough to just keep talking about their problem. There should be some radical solutions to solve a lot of the misery they face.

Written by Eman AbdElRahman
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Picture for Menia`s train station from the project's Flickr account.

One of the other stories mentioned is by “Mariam”, a 25 year-old who was widowed twice, and was remarried for a third time to a 65 year-old man.

Mariam was the only girl to a very poor family. She had 4 brothers. She had to work in buying and selling grocery with the foundation of her mother’s retirement money, 80 pounds a month. When she was 15 she had a proposal from her cousin. She accepted, wishing for a better life.

Soon enough, she had her fights with her husband and his mother though she did all that was required from her. Everyday she waked up from the dawn, cleaning, feeding and milking the cattle and making cheese. She did also all the house keeping to the extend that she had no time for herself. She started to ignore her husband’s needs. He couldn’t stand that and he committed suicide by burning himself. He shortly died after staying 2 days at the hospital.

But the story doesn't end here, “Mariam” then returned back to her mother's house when she was 17. And in order to escape the bad conditions in the house, she accepted another marriage proposal wishing for a better life, when again her second husband died all of a sudden.

She returned to her mother’s house again but this time they couldn’t stand her and started teasing her about her poverty and the death of her 2 husbands, telling her that she was the cause of this. Finally she got a proposal from an aged man, 65 years old. She was uneducated and she couldn’t wait for other better chances.

A picture for participants during a blogging session by Nevine Fahem.

Another heartbreaking story is by “Nadia”, a young woman in a family of 8 - who suffered after her father died and left them without a pension.

Many people were helping us during my father’s illness until his death. It was inevitable that my mother should work. She worked as bread maker and in collecting the crops but that wasn’t enough for feeding, dressing and educating 7 children .

The villagers asked us to work in constrictions for 3 pounds a day including our food. […] We were working 12 hours a day, carrying contraction’s materials on our head which were basically cement, sand and white bricks, carrying them to the scaffold. They insulted us so much but we couldn’t do without that job. We had to bear all that so that we can live.

My brothers weren’t able to continue their education. Three daughters didn’t go to school from the first place. They did the house keeping instead. Only one went for sometime to an illiteracy institution. It was only me that made it to some high school.

“Heba”, another participant in the workshop, told her story [ar] about giving birth to females. She got married when she was 14. Soon enough, she gave birth to 3 girls, when the doctor advised her not to give birth again - because it is dangerous for her health. Her mother-in-law started mistreating her in order to give birth again to a boy!

كانت علي وشك الموت، ورغم عملها في البيوت للانفاق علي بناتها ومساعدة زوجها في مصاريف البيت ، لم يرحموها لانهم عايزين الولد وهددها زوجها بالطرد من البيت هي وبناتها، والزواج بأخري اذا لم تنجب له الولد، وهيمنع عنها المصروف، وهي يتيمة الاب و الام
و لايوجد لديها اي عائل اخر […]
فهي تسأل ماذا تفعل وكيف تحقق امنية زوجها؟ وهل عدم انجاب الولد مسؤوليتها وحدها؟

Tea break through out one of the workshops.

As for future plans for the project, Nevine wrote in the project blog:

I can’t deny that the right of health was the top issues that girls would like to write and photograph and take video shoots about. So next month we will dedicate more posts on the health states for women with video shoots with women them selves and doctors in the health unit, hospital and pharmacy.

Also, we hope to provide a legal aid from other NGOs to the village’s women who in need to insure their housing and making interviews with lawyers and women. Also, we hope to meet more stick holders in the village to focus on women rights and link the village with decision makers.

You can follow more updates from the project through their Twitter page, and YouTube channel.

Written by Eman AbdElRahman
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Nevine Fahem, the project's organizer, said that she received encouraging positive feedback from all participants, and currently she is preparing for the next workshop soon. She also added that women are still at the early stages to share videos or photos. However, they have already started to share stories about the difficulties they face in their village. Part of the workshop included tips to help them tell their own stories, and they practiced narrating some of these experiences to project facilitators, who then transcribed their words for the blog. This part of the workshop will help prepare the women in future activities to tell their stories as video or audio podcasts. These are some of those introductory stories:

In a post titled “The Sweet Lady Baking at Dawn,” one of the women narrated this story:

انا عايزة اكلمكم انهاردة عن الست المصرية اللى عايشة في الريف، في قرية الدوادية ، الستات عندينا زي ما هما في كل ريف مصر، ستات عايزة تعيش مع رجلها وعيالها في سلام ، الفلاحة المصرية اول من يصحى في الفجر في البيت ، تغسل وشها وتشكر ربنا على صحة عيالها وسلامة زوجها ، وبعدها تشوف اللى وراها في البيت وشغل ما بيخلصش…

الفلاحة المصرية ميخلصش دورها عند التنظيف وتسخين المية للزوجها ، دة يدوبك بداية النهار ، احنا كدة ليسة الساعة ستة ونصف او سابعة الصبح، الست دي بتطلع برة البيت تسعى على رزقها بردو، اغلب الستات في الدوادية ارزقية ، ميعرفوش التوظيف ، كلهم بيشتغل في تسمين الطيور والبهايم خبيز العيش الرحى او الشمسي، ويطلعوا في ايام معينة من اخر الاسبوع يبيعوا الطير اللى ربوه ، ومش كل اسبوع هيقدروا يبيعوا وزة ولا بطة، في اغلب المرات هيطلعوا يسرحوا بشوية بمية او عدان ملوخية ، والخضار رزقة فليل لكن بيمشي واحسن من مافيش، الستات الارزقيات لازم يعرفوا يجيبوا فلوس كل مرة بيخرجوا فيها برة البيت.

العيال كمان لهم نصيب من العمل خارج المنزل ، في اسر ممكن تسرح العيال بأكياس فشار يروحوا يبيعوها على الطريق، او يسرحوا مع امهم في بيع كام كيلو خضار ولا حتة جبنة او كام بيضة جبوهم الصبح من تحت الفراغ، لكن اوحش حاجة ان فيه عيال ممكن تطلع الجبل تقطع الحجر، دول ممكن يرجعوا وممكن ميرجعوش ومشاكلهم الصحية كتيرة ، صدرهم مع الوقت بيتعب ، ويوميتهم محدودة في الاخر.
الغريب ان ست الدار قليل ما حد من البيت بيشكر تعبها ، ست شقيانه جوة البيت وبراه واول واحدة تصحى واخر واحدة تنام واخر واحدة ممكن تأكل واخر واحدة ممكن نسأل على صحتها، الست في الريف بتشتغل كتير وبتتحمل مسؤليات كبيرة لو قصرت فيها تتلام وممكن تضرب وتنهان من زوجها من حماتها . اهل الزوج دول كمان موال تاني عايزة كتابة مرة كمان!!

In another post, another woman narrated “It's our house, and strangers kick us out“, where she explains that tragedy of how it goes with women and her husband's family after he passes away:

تخيلوا بعد ما تقعد في دارك سينين طويلة، تشهد حيطانه على فرحك وحزنك على حظل الكتير وحظك القليل، تيجي الحكومة تطرودك بره، تخيلوا دة حصل في الدوادية !!! الست سعاد ست اميرة ارملة وام لاربع بنات، بعد وفاة زوجها غدر عليها اهله ، رفضوا تكون هي وعيالها في بيت العيلة، واكلوا ورثوا وحقه في امه وابوه، الست سعاد مستسلمتش ، ست جادة وتد بصحيح ، راحت وسكنت من زمن في بيت وحديها هي وعيالها ، وقررت تشتغل آمال اية؟؟؟.

قررت تشتغل، تعرفوا اشتغلت اية؟؟؟ اشتغلت سواقة لعربية نصف نقل تنقل بها العمال من القرية للجبل !!! وكأنها عايزة تقول للخلق كلتهم انا ست قوية واقدر اعمل اللى معملتهوش ست تانية واللى بيعمله الرجالة بس

The story continues speaking about another more tragic problems concerning the ownership of the land they are living on. The government decided that Saud cannot live in her new house. Yet, the story ends with some hope of giving a voice to Saud, through the project, to tell us more about her work, and how she is raising her four children.

Portrait by Safa Samir during a previous project implemented by New Women Foundation called “Creative women in Shadow”, also in Dawadia village.

One other woman shared her simple hope of completing her education, saying:

أنا نفسي اكمل تعلمي زي بنات المدينة، لكن بيقولي لازم تطلعي من التعليم وكفاية عليكي تقري وتكتبي لان التعليم بضر مش بيفيد!!!

One last post narrated by one of the participants, she talked about how difficult it is for them to even have “bread” at times. But of course that is not everything, more updates from the project's first workshop to come soon. You can see more photos of the workshops at the Women of Minya Day by Day Flickr account, where they also share some of the art created by another project that the New Women Foundation implemented in the village.

Written by Eman AbdElRahman
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This was my first visit to Minya, even though my father is originally from Upper Egypt. Minya is often known as the “Bride of Upper Egypt” and a statue of Queen Nefertiti is prominent in the city's entrance. It is the only governorate which has a woman as a symbol, but Nevine replied that “it does not symbolize the well-being of women here.” Upon arrival, it appeared to be that the governorate seemed to be neglected, as it has been one of the poorest areas in the country over the last 15 years according to Human Development reports. The percentage of the population that is illiterate is 67% Some of the comments and statistics would provide the context of some of the stories that we heard from the young women that we met.

Harsh Working Conditions

Our destination was a village called Dawadeyya and we knew we were arriving soon when we spotted Minya Mountain. It's known for being a source of marble, and where local workers spend around 16 hours a day breaking rocks and preparing them for manufacturing. Unfortunately about a quarter of the quarry workers in Minya are minors. Working on the mountain also poses serious health problems, such as lung, vision, skin, and some have even lost a limb from the machines that use a very high voltage of electricity. However, it is not only men and children who work in the quarry because women also can be found collecting rocks under the hot sun.

Minya mountain where many of the quarries are located.

In Dawadeyya, we were received by three nice women who are representatives from the high board of the Ben El-Reef (Daughter of Countryside) Society, the organization that the New Woman Foundation will be partnering with to teach the citizen media project. All three were wearing the traditional Abaya and a hair scarf, even the male accountant working with them, was dressed in a Jellabiya. They do not wear formal attire because they are able to better relate to the community that they serve, when they dress with local customs. This is especially important since the women often visit other women in their homes to talk about family issues or reproductive health issues.

We met some of the young women who will participate in the program. Approximately eight entered the modest office of Bent El-Reef, with big smiles on their faces. The head of the organization explained why they were smiling, “they are very happy to have visitors in Dawadeyya.”

Hearing the Stories of the Young Women

The first young woman introduced herself as Shimaa, the oldest sister of four brothers. She is responsible of helping her mother in making a living since her father passed away some years ago. “I first worked in construction, I used to carry blocks and sandbags on top of my head from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” she would say with self-confidence and with a smile. “But I was only paid 4 or 5 pounds a day” (equivalent to approximately to 1 $US), while men who did the same job were paid triple. “Now I am farming and take the harvest to the market myself,” she added and revealed that she did all this while attending evening school to learn how to read and write.

Women of Minya

The next girl, Aya was still in high school. She said, “sometimes I don't attend school in order to work, otherwise, I would not even the tuition fees.” Even though she received good grades in middle school, her father wanted her to drop out of school because he did not want to pay for anything. She spoke honestly and angrily about how her father treated her and her four sisters, as if they were like “animals”. However, she is eager to learn and thinks that others should learn about how some people live in her village.

After hearing some of these stories, I joked, “women here are as tough as men!” and everyone laughed except for Huda who looked sad. She introduced herself briefly, “I'm Huda. I do not work, but I want to learn how to use the internet.” However, she also thought that she was not as impressive to the visitors as compared to the others because she said she only does household chores for her three brothers and her aging father, while her mother works.

Citizen Media to Tell Their Stories

These stories remind us that women in Upper Egypt often work equally as hard as men and in equally harsh conditions, but are paid less. Yet, when the work is over and men can lay down to relax, the work for the women does not end. There are household chores that need attending to. In the village of Dawadeyya, baking is a common chore for the women. They often spend 10 hours or more baking for her family and the neighbors, and also to sell. A traditional mud oven can be found inside the house, but it is unhealthy for the woman and her children because of the fumes. With funding from the UNDP, Bent El-Reef developed an oven equipped with an air exhaust pipe and a sliding door to prevent carbon monoxide from coming into the house. With more of these ovens in the community, women and her daughters can earn a living by selling gas for the oven.

Learning how to use a digital camera

Written by Noha Atef
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Cairo street scenes. Image by Flickr user Ed Yourdon. CC BY-SA

Cairo - The capital city

The population of Egypt, according to a survey conducted in July 2007, is estimated to be around 80 million, where the estimated rate of growth of population is 1.721%. Cairo is regarded as the 19th largest city in the world, with a total population exceeding 16 million people, and among the world's most densely populated cities.

Although the government is trying to encourage migration to the newly irrigated land reclaimed from the desert, the proportion of the population living in rural areas has continued to decrease as people moved to the cities in search of employment and higher standard of living. Most of the facilities and governmental institutes are centralized in Cairo.

Map of Egypt. Image by Flickr user elicrisko. CC BY

But Egypt is not Cairo

The concentration of population is in major urban areas in Egypt and Egypt is not only Cairo. People live in three major regions of the country: Cairo and Alexandria and elsewhere along the banks of the Nile - as well as small communities spread throughout the desert regions of Egypt. Below is a list for some of the most important cities in Egypt, and famous citizen voices within these areas.

Alexandria, with a population of 4.1 million, is the second-largest city in Egypt, and is the country's largest seaport. It is also an important tourist resort and an important industrial center because of its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez, another city in Egypt.

Recently Alexandria witnessed a terrible crime where Khaled Said, a 28-year-old Egyptian citizen from there, was allegedly tortured to death at the hands of two officers who wanted to search him under the emergency law. My name is Khaled Said [Ar] is a Facebook page that was created after his murder - and in no time became an important network for arranging silent sit-ins condemning the emergency law, and police brutality in Egypt.

El-Mahalla El-Kubra is a large industrial and agricultural city in Egypt, located in the middle of the Nile Delta on the western bank of the Damietta branch. It is known for its dominant textile industry.

It is home to the largest public sector Egyptian textile company, the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company , and during the calls for the first national disobedience in 2006; blogger Kareem El Behery [Ar] did a great job covering workers protests. Since then, he’s been popular with covering labor issues in Egypt in general, and El Mahalla El Kubra in particular.

Al-Arīsh is the capital and largest city (with 114,900 inhabitants) of the Egyptian governorate of North Sinai, lying on the Mediterranean coast of the Sinai peninsula which historically has been the center of conflict between various political factions. Al Arish is mostly inhabitant by Bedouins, a predominantly desert-dwelling Arab ethnic group.

From Al Arish there is a blog entitled “Sinai where I am” [Ar], by Al Anany, that turned as a portal to the daily news and events happening in the city.

And also, not to forget the famous blogger, activist and poet Mosad Abu Fagr, who’s just been released after detention for three years because of his writings about the demands of Sinai Bedouins, expressing their life and seeking equal rights of citizenship.

Port Said. Image by Flickr user dolanh. CC BY-NC-SA

Port Said is another major Egyptian city in north-east Egypt, near the Suez Canal, with an approximate population of 515,007.

One of the earliest websites that was opened, PortSaid online [Ar] has been launched to act as an important portal to follow news happening there, as well as a way for PortSaidians to follow job listings and events taking place in their city.

Lastly, Minya Governorate is one of the governorates of Upper Egypt. It is located approximately 245 km (152 miles) south of Cairo on the western bank of the Nile River, which flows north through the city - with population around 4.2 million.

Minya is dubbed by the locals “Bride of Upper Egypt”, in reference to its strategic location in Middle Egypt as a vital link between the north and the south of Egypt.

In Minya, our 3rd winning project “Women of Minya day by day” should take place. It is expected to amplify voices of working women in informal laborers, and shed light on the many difficulties and obstacles they face.

Representative or not?

Well, since there are no detailed study about the demography of the blogs in Egypt is available, it is still difficult to tell whether the blogs are representative to all ethnics and geo-locations within the country or not. However, no doubt the high concentration of population within Cairo, as well as the low Internet access rates in other cities - stay as an obstacle towards spreading the usage of citizen media evenly through out the whole country. Yet hopefully, with initiatives similar to Women of Mineya Day by Day seeing the light, the future of citizen media in Egypt would take a different route.

Written by Eman AbdElRahman
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Women of Minya Day by Day is the newest project of the New Women Foundation [ar] based in Cairo. Nevine Ebeid and other members of the Foundation team will provide workshops to women living and working in El Minya located approximately 250 km south of the capital city. The target participants will be women who work in informal agricultural and domestic jobs, and who are often faced with discrimination and harrassment. The team will show the women how to use digital tools, such as audio recorders and video cameras to capture images in order to tell the stories of their daily work lives, and which will be featured on the New Women Foundation website. In this video, Nevine talks about how the project will be a first step towards advocating for increased rights of the women and to give this population a voice online.

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Written by Eddie Avila
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Please welcome the following projects, which will soon begin their work to bring new Egyptian voices to light. Over the next month, we'll be introducing you to each of the 3 grantees in more depth, and tell you about their vision and why they feel their project is needed.

Mokattam Blog Tales

In 1992, a powerful earthquake hit the city of Cairo, in which 370 lost their lives, many more left injured, and even more were left displaced. Out of that tragedy, thousands of residents picked up and started over, settling in an area which is now the neighborhood of Masaken Alzelzal - Alhadba Alwosta (which can roughly be translated to Earthquake Neighborhood), located near the prominent Mokattam mountain. Now, it is a bustling suburb of the Egyptian capital with a growing population.

This colorful neighborhood is plagued by the usual societal problems of many large metropolitan areas, such as a lack of job opportunities and struggles to obtain basic services. However, there is much more to this neighborhood than meets the eye, and the project Mokattam Blog Tales will work with teenagers of the area to tell the story of their community.

Nesma Geiwely of the Namaa Initiative will partner with the NGO Alwan & Awtar, who will show the youth in the area how they can use citizen media tools like digital cameras, video cameras, and blogs to use their creative talents in the performing arts to express themselves. In addition to capturing the essence of daily life in Mokattam, the youth will interview local residents and show a different side of life in this Cairo suburb.

Nazra for Feminist Studies: Exploring Taboos

The topics of gender equality, sexual diversity, appropriate male/female interactions, and other related topics are often taboo subjects in Egypt. Some hold the opinion that these topics are best left to be spoken about in private, if at all. Nevertheless, this subject matter is of importance to many other Egyptians, who feel that there is a need to discuss these topics because they affect their daily lives. A Cairo-based organization called Nazra for Feminist Studies aims to provide a safe place for women and men to discuss these issues, and for them, there is no better place to address these topics freely and frankly, than through the use of blogs and online forums.

Mozn Hassan, Doaa Abdelaal, Ramy Raoof, Fatma Emam and Bassam Mortada will lead the project Tankeeb fil Tabohaat, which means “Exploring Taboos”, by holding a series of discussions to help identify Egyptians interested in writing about these topics in online spaces. With the help and support of experienced Egyptian bloggers, the members of Nazra will teach Egyptians how they can express their thoughts and feelings on these subjects and hold meaningful conversations with others, while maintaining their privacy if needed.

The hope is that these conversations will open the doors for others from Egyptian society to join in these conversations and lower the stigma of discussing these issues with one another, and in addition, can provide safe spaces to share experiences and knowledge on these topics.

Women of Minya Day by Day

Women working as daily or informal laborers in the Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt face many difficulties and obstacles. For one, these women, who work in agricultural, domestic, or manual labor jobs, often do not enjoy the benefits and legal protections of those workers with regular employment. They are often prone to wage disputes, discrimination, and higher levels of poverty.

There are NGOs working in Minya, who provide literacy classes, job-skills training, and counseling for this population of women. The New Woman Foundation aims to add citizen media training to the services offered to the women, as a way to raise awareness of their status and to be a first step towards increased advocacy for these women and thousands of others just like them.

Nevin Ebeid, who has worked extensively with this rural population and has conducted academic research on their situation, will lead a series of workshops, where she will show a group of these women, how to tell their stories using digital citizen media tools. In addition to the workshops, a conference will be held for the community, where the women can showcase their work and tell others about their lives as daily and informal laborers.

Please join us in welcoming these 3 newest members of the Rising Voices community.

Written by Eddie Avila
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