On this episode of DdTv Emily Jacobi and Abby Goldberg travel to Port-Au-Prince, where they are invited to meet with organizations working on creating a mechanism to streamline methods of protection, documentation and service provisions for women around gender-based violence. While there, Emily and Abby meet with local women leaders and conduct a photography training to help empower women to raise awareness of this violence by documenting their lives and struggle. This episode gives an inside look at this photography-training with these amazing women.

How do these women describe themselves and other Haitian women? How do they photograph their communities and the people in them? This episode premiered at our event honoring Haitian women last week, on the six-month anniversary of the earthquake. We gave 75 people at the event the opportunity to chat live with three inspiring women in Haiti (and participants of the first photography training this spring) representing two grassroots organizations – FAVILEK and KOFAVIV – both organizations working locally in Port-Au-Prince to combat violence against women.

The event was a new format for DigiDem. While we have taught classes virtually and enabled staff meetings via videoconference, DigiDem has never held a live video exchange between activists working on the ground and activists here at home. What made last night different is that Skype enabled a real exchange between two groups that otherwise would not meet one another.  For us in New York, it was a privilege to hear directly from Haitian women themselves rather than about them through journalists or international organizations. For the women leaders, the simple fact of seeing a room full of people in NY, let alone communicating directly with them, was in itself a major feat – the women, who fight day and night and inhabit safe houses to stay protected, know they are supported.

In the wake of the January devastation, women have suffered a second crisis of personal security, both at home where they are faced with the inability to provide for increased dependents in their homes, or in displaced persons camps where they are under constant threat of attack. Despite their natural leadership abilities – evident to all who heard from them speak on Wednesday – they have little opportunity to share their perspective.  They don’t have websites, and access to email is inconsistent.  For donors abroad, this means they don’t exist, or are too inaccessible to reach.  Our goal, as in all our work, is to help increase access to the halls of power – literally as well as through citizen’s who will take on their cause – and provide them with the tools to have a voice. And at least last night, people were listening!

Haitian women and girls have suffered a great deal under Haitian law and structural discrimination, meaning that they are systematically more impoverished, less empowered, and more susceptible to violence; though there is no existing data on the levels of gender based violence, anecdotally, somewhere between 70-80% of Haitians having been victims of violence BEFORE the earthquake, and it has, in the words of Haitian women, become a crisis SINCE that time!  More than half of households are headed by women, which means more than half of the population depends on them for their livelihoods, safety, and security.  Yet while women hold the majority of responsibility in the informal sector, their formal representation in the economy, government, and diplomacy do not nearly reflect their importance in Haitian society.

Digital Democracy works to empower groups like the grassroots women of Haiti – people who have previously lacked power or public voice but can leverage new technologies to overcome historic exclusion.  Last night’s event proved just that. For the past several months, we have been working to provide tech support and strategy to Haitian women and their allies, the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, Madre, the New Media Advocacy Project, to name a few.  Haitian women are by and large a strong and powerful force.  But that character trait does not map onto their formal influence or power to decide the policies affecting their lives.  Until now.

We’d like to thank all of the people & organizations that helped make this event a success:

Our incredible volunteers: Biz Ghormley, Erica Berger, Emilie Reiser, Lori White, Meghan Curran, Arielle Darr & Ellen Knuti.

The staff at ITP: Nancy Hechinger, George E Agudow, Brian Kim, & Marlon Evan.

Our brilliant photographer Annie Powers. See her event photos here.

Our sponsors: Beer lovingly provided by Brooklyn Brewery:http://www.brooklynbrewery.com/, and wine provided by Best Cellars.

Our Partners: Adam Stofsky & N-MAP http://newmediaadvocacy.org/ and the “Haitian Women Testify” video they screened, IJDH: http://ijdh.org/, Blaine Bookey & BAI and the amazing women of KOFAVIV.

If you’d like to support KOFAVIV’s work, you can donate to IJDH here:http://ijdh.org/get-involved/donate, and earmark your donations for “KOFAVIV”.

You can support Digital Democracy’s work in Haiti helping women to report gender-based violence, by visiting our site: http://digital-democracy.org/get-involved/

To purchase prints or pre-order a book of the photos taken by these women, please email us at info [at] digital-democracy.org

Thank you to all of who made this evening possible! We hope to do it again soon…

But most importantly, I’m meeting with some of the amazing grassroots women’s groups who are working to combat gender-based violence in the camps. Their stories are sometimes harrowing and often inspiring, and I don’t just want to speak with them myself – I want you to speak with them too.

On Wednesday, Digital Democracy is hosting an event at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Come join us for a livestream discussion with Haitian women, music, drinks and more.

Get your ticket today to attend the event and support our work with Haitian women.

Our coalition is working to ensure that the there continues to be a leading force in pushing for the security and inclusion of Haitian women in recovery processes, especially those still occupying some 1400 camps in and around Port Au Prince. Please see the Press Release and short video on sexual and gender based violence in the camps.

Press Release- Supplemental-SGBV in Haiti

We have many notes to process and photos to edit – check out some sneak previews on Flickr, and stay tuned for upcoming blog posts about the trip.

1. Investigating how technology can be leveraged to protect women and girls from gender-based violence.
2. Conducting media trainings with women and leaving them with equipment to continue reporting their views from the ground.

The second objective is where you come in. Our training equipment was destroyed in the earthquake, and we need to purchase more. We’d like to raise enough money to leave equipment with the training participants. The voices of Haitian women are key to the redevelopment process.

Our overall trip budget is $7,500, and thanks to individual donors and a travel grant from the Arca Foundation, we have now raised $5,150. We need your support to raise the final $2,500 and purchase equipment to leave in the hands of Haitian women. Please donate to our fiscal sponsor IMTD today.

On Wednesday my colleague Abby Goldberg  and I are traveling to Haiti to work on exactly that. Working with international agencies and grassroots women’s organizations, we’re focusing on how technology can be leveraged to protect women, and conducting media workshops with women’s groups.

Here’s the reality on the ground for Haitian women:
In displaced persons camps and tent cities, women are struggling to access food, shelter and security in the face of increasing attacks and rapes. This violence exists within the context of existing discrimination. Before the earthquake, it is estimated that 8 out of 10 had been victims of violence, and 3 of 10 victims of sexual violence. Haitian women work for lower wages for longer hours, and are more likely to work in the informal sector. Rape was not considered a crime until 2005, and Haitian women face stiffer penalties for adultery than men. Land rights are denied to women, yet approximately 43% of households are headed by single mothers, meaning these women and their families will not benefit from agricultural reforms and stimulus aid.

Here’s what we will do:
Despite the dire circumstances, we have met inspiring Haitian women working to change the situation, and we are traveling to Haiti to support their efforts. On our trip, Abby and I will be focusing on two areas:
·   Harnessing technology to report incidents of sexual violence and provide protection for women & girls
·   Media trainings for Haitian women’s organizations to amplify their voices, stories and needs to the larger community.

Why we need your support:
We don’t plan to only meet with women in Haiti, we want to leave them with equipment for them to produce their own media, which brings our  total trip costs to $7,500. Thus far we’ve raised $2,150, enough to get us on the ground, and we need your help to raise the rest. Donate to our fiscal sponsor IMTD today to support this project and invest in the women of Haiti.

Humble as he is, he dedicated the Clinton prize to all Ushahidi volunteers. Congrats again teams! We’ve been writing a lot recently about the successes that volunteers have had crisismapping in response to earthquakes and it’s exciting to hear Patrick to set a goal to train “100 universities in the developing world” in crisismapping. It’s a brilliant idea and a powerful way to have pre-crisis preparedness. Particularly when coupled with 21st century learning initiatives like Project Einstein, where young people on the ground can use photography and mapping to build out the critical infrastructure necessary for a crisismapping system like Ushahidi to be effective.

Advisor Patrick receives award from Bill Clinton

For me personally, the year 2010 has been quite emotional. The tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti has been juxtaposed by the outpouring of human support in response, and we’ve witnessed first-hand how technology can help ordinary people contribute to the emergency response. The folks at Crisis Commons have organized dozens of crisis camps where volunteers contributed to earthquake response, supporting tech tools, building apps and more. Thousands of volunteers contributed to the OpenStreetMap of Port-au-Prince, and hundreds of Haitian-Americans helped translate text messages from Kreyol to English once a Haitian shortcode was established.

Mark and I went to Boston to wait for the safe arrival of the Fletcher students working on Project Einstein: Haiti when the earthquake struck and had the privilege of being in Boston for the launch of the Fletcher Situation Room where we helped train some of the early volunteers who went on to train so many more. Their work has taken Ushahidi to a whole new level, creating new systems of organizing and verifying information. Their energy, devotion and level of coordination has been truly inspiring.  Volunteers from the Fletcher Ushahidi Situation Room have not only mapped over 3,500 incidents, they helped directly coordinate aid and save lives during search and rescue missions.

Most importantly, many of the volunteers around the world who used technology tools to support earthquake relief have done so in an attempt to respect local voices and needs a much as possible. As the Ushahidi-Haiti team works to hand over the platform to local actors, we are inspired by this new approach that demonstrates the power of putting technology in the hands of local actors. It’s an exciting example of global community to take these successes and apply the lessons as a curriculum for other contexts around the world.

This report details the findings of their research, gives an overview of the Project Einstein curriculum adapted for Haiti and provides recommendations for how training young people will be a critical aspect of reconstruction, providing 21st century skills and an infrastructure of empowerment by monitoring aid and corruption.

Project Einstein Haiti

The project on the ground was led by two students at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, Joshua Haynes and Chrissy Martin. Chrissy had this to say about her experiences:

Project Einstein Haiti developed out of a serendipitous meeting in New York with Mark.  I was leaving for Haiti in a few days to conduct research with youth on their attitudes towards finance.  Despite experience working on and researching financial inclusion and mobile technology, I didn’t know much working with youth.  As a result, I reached out to Digital Democracy, aware of their work with youth and digital photography.

I walked away from the meeting with a research methodology, four digital cameras, and the nicest phone I’ve ever used: a Nokia N97.  The Project Einstein methodology was an ideal way to accomplish my goal of understanding the youth attitude towards finance in an engaging and fun manner that would be rewarding for the participants as well as the researchers.

The two days that Josh and I spent with the twelve high school students in Gros Monde were extremely rewarding.  We spent time discussing the power of photography to tell stories, as well as time discussing how difficult it is to earn money in their community. I was extremely impressed by their enthusiasm and the ease at which they engaged with a technology that they had never used before.

I could not be more thankful that I had the opportunity to work closely with this group of Haitians before their country was destroyed just three days later.  A few pictures survived, although I regret that their photographs did not.  I can only hope that they will again have an opportunity to tell their story through digital tools that will allow the rest of the world to hear.

Because of tools such as photography, Twitter, Facebook, and SMS, Haitians have been able to contribute to the international coverage of their own crisis in a way that would not have been possible just a few years ago.  Mainstream media sources including CNN and CBS News have relied on these alternative sources for aspects of their coverage, giving voice to locals rather than relying solely on international journalists. In addition, new tools such as Ushahidi allowed international organizations to plan their response based on near real-time mapping of reports from Haitians through a wide variety of media sources. Amidst the devastation, I find hope in the possibility of leveraging these technologies to give Haitians a voice in their own reconstruction as well.

For more information about our work, please download the following report:

Digital Democracy Haiti Report 2010