“Visualizing Wome's Rights” This is the title of a workshop organized by Tachtical Tech http://www.tacticaltech.org in Jordan,Fenyan 5-8 Dec,2010.

The first time I knew about this workshop, I was wondering how women rights can be visualized. So Rising Voices and Tachtical Tech sponsored me to participate  in  the workshop. we all traveled by buses to Feynan from Amman to Feynan for about three hours. Then 20 minutes by Four Wheel Drive from the nearest road to the Pristine Dana Biosphere Reserve where Feynan Eco Lodge is located. The manager of the eco lodge told us that the eco lodge is one of the top fifty eco lodge in the world by National Geographic Adventure Magazine. There was no electricity or Internet connectivity, and we were spending the whole nights with the candles light only.

The organizers divided us into three tracks, Information Design, Mappaing, and Animation. For me I was attending information design track. In the three days of information design, I learnt how to prepare the information in a way that can express its meaning to the audience by drawing, photographing, or using cartoons …etc. They showed us many examples  around the world how people used the information they have, and made it  more intersting for the audience. One of these examples that I liked most is ” Blank Noise” http://blog.blanknoise.org/ . By Blank Noise, women were able to  send the pictures of their dresses that they were wearing in the streets when a man tried to harassed  them. The idea of posting these pictures of dresses on the website is to raise public awarnes on the bad effecs of sexual harassment in the street on women.

In addition, they gave us necessary tools that we can use it in collecting or designing the information, such as, Google Fusion, Many Eyes.

In the last day, all the groups of other tracks and my group have gathered, and talked about what they did in mapping, animation, and information design. In brief, This workshop enhanced my abilities to use  the information that I have to reach my cause. Moreover, I learnt from the experience of some of the participants in campaigning. Now I can say that I am ready to start working on my own campaign to stop sexual harassment in the streets.