Take Back The Tech Hunt The Feminist Tech Exchange Hub opened today at the Power of Movements Forum in Cape Town, South Africa, with the aim of placing technology and communications rights at the center of women’s rights strategising. Skills-sharing, audio editing, blogging, live radio broadcasts, digital storytelling, and an internet tech hunt all form part of the Hub’s activities 14 – 17 November.
The FTX Hub follows on the heels of the first global international Feminist Tech Exchange (FTX) where over 100 women’s rights activists debated about the feminist practice of technology and gained new skills in using the internet for advocacy. The FTX Hub is a place to put those skills into practice – and to share ideas around how critical communications rights are to women’s rights with over 2000 women attending this Association for Women’s Rights and Development Forum.
Open eXchange skill sharing sessions on wikis for gender resources, web 2.0, mobiles for advocacy, even computer animation are open for all forum participants, who can sign up for sharing as well. Digital stories and videos, developed by the training tracks at the Feminist Tech Exchange one week prior, and other women’s communications stories will be projected continuously. FTX Online buzzes with blogs; follow the tag “awid2008” in the blogosphere, and share your comments and thoughts on AWID activities.
Forum delegates can participate in a four-day tech hunt from the Take Back the Tech Campaign, calling on everyone to reclaim technology to end violence against women. To join the Tech Hunt, Forum participants can log on to the Take Back the Tech site to solve clues and find out more about how technologies like mobile phones and the internet can impact women’s rights and violence against women. Fifty winners will win USB flash drives featuring useful tools for activism, portable applications on secure online communications and resources on communications and women’s rights. The fastest participant to solve the Tech Hunt puzzle will win a Hewlett Packard laptop for an organisation or network of their choice.
Radio FIRE, whose live webcasts take AWID’s plenary session to the world is also hosting the FIREplace at the Hub every afternoon, webcasting women’s voices worldwide.
FTX is organised by the Association for Progressive Communications Women’s Networking Support Programme, the Association for Women’s Rights in Development, together with local partner, “Women’sNet”:http://www.womensnet.org.za.