Tuesday, March 13, at 3:30 in the AT&T conference center, come hear Emily Jacobi on the “Women Drive Change: Tech in the Global South” panel (#femtech is the hashtag) along with Catherine Harrington of the Women’s Learning Partnership, Jenn Sramek of Civic Actions, Ashoka Fellow Kara Andrade from Vozz (who has partnered with Dd on work in Guatemala) and Zawadi Nyong’o of the Africa Cancer Foundation.

They will be discussing how, from Africa to South America to Southeast Asia, women in the Global South are using technology tools in new and creative ways with astounding results. Sophisticated and coordinated social media campaigns are becoming the domain of women all over the world.

The speakers will talk about what this means for women in the Global South, how their online personas might differ from real-world personas in societies where women have fewer rights, and where technology tools need to go next in order to meet their specific needs.

Mark Belinsky will also be speaking. His panel, “How Not to Die: Using Tech in a Dictatorship” is on Monday, March 12 at 9 am in Room 9ABC. Mark will be presenting alongside Brian Conley of Small World News, Deanna Zandt of Techbologist and Sabrina Hersi Issa of Be Bold Media, discussing how technologies often built in the west are being used around the world in extremely dangerous situations. They’ll discuss how people have protected themselves around the globe, including concrete experiences and examples from Burma, Tibet, Liberia and Egypt.

See you in Austin.

Two years ago, Dd launched programming focused on Women and gender issues in Haiti, a country where women make up 52% of the population but are largely excluded from formal decision making and have historically been the subjects of disproportionate rates of violence. Following the earthquake in 2010, violence was exacerbated (Read the recently released NYU Law study reflecting on the alarming rise in sexual violence post-earthquake and how it has effected women’s lives). Dd’s work aimed to highlight our partners agency and empower them to use their voices and share their expertise in new ways, as part of a systemic address to gender-based violence (GBV).

In the wake of the January, 2010 earthquake, we began collaborating with KOFAVIV, FAVILEK and other women’s groups in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, providing trainings in photography and digital literacy. These trainings were aimed to give women new tools to share their stories and perspectives on life in displacement camps and poor neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince with a national and international audience. You can see some of their photos here.

Over the past two years, our collaboration has grown and evolved, as new digital tools and increased technical capacity have strengthened the organizing and advocacy efforts of our partners in Haiti. Other aspects of our work in Haiti include trainings to enhance digital literacy, technical skills, mapping and digital security. Following these trainings, our partners in Haiti have created a blog of anonymously posted stories reflecting their voices from the ground in PaP.

We have worked with KOFAVIV to develop a secure database to digitize & streamline information as part of a comprehensive approach to helping women survivors of gender-based violence access needed  medical, legal and psychological services. With the database, KOFAVIV can analyze and track trends in cases received. This improves their ability to report on GBV and leverage their expertise on the ground to push local, national and international power players to implement concrete measures to address the security of women and girls in Haiti.  (read more about the database in Wired here) and follow up on our progress here with a recent report on our work.

We have also worked with KOFAVIV and the two largest mobile carriers in Haiti, Digicel & Voila, to set up a FREE emergency response call center for GBV. In Haiti there is no effective 911-like system. By dialing 572, callers are connected to our partners who provide support and resources over the phone, directing them to  the nearest treatment centers, educating them about basic rights and legal recourse and stressing the importance of medical care in the first 72 hours after rape to prevent HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancy. (Read more about the call center here.)

Our work in Haiti is part of a larger constellation of work to amplify and support women as leaders in Haiti. In the Huffington Post, Stephanie Foster highlights  one of the current national initiatives to unite women as a driving force in the reconstruction and development of Haiti.

This effort has been supported by Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, United Stated Department of State. In the Ambassador’s supporting remarks, she highlights the universality of this commitment: “You know well that no country can get ahead if it leaves half of its people behind, if it fails to tap the potential, experience, talents and vision of its women. You also know that when women progress, all of society progresses.”

We agree. In solidarity with women working from the grassroots around the globe, those working with technology to help build tools to unite those women and enhance their work, from our women-led team at Dd, we wish you all a very happy, celebratory and empowering International Women’s Day 2012.

Update 2/1/12: It was a great day! Check out our photos here: http://bit.ly/wJl35R 

“From Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, technology has played an important role in shaping contemporary resistance and the representation of these events in the media. What new tools of protest and occupation have emerged over the past year? How does their use help to shape tomorrow’s democracies?” — Eyebeam

We’ll be joining 15 other projects and organizations, presenting on how we’ve used tech to help activism.

Eyebeam is located at 540 W 21st St. New York, NY 10011 (map).

See you there!

Today we announce the launch of the only phone-based emergency response system dedicated to rape and sexual assault in Haiti. Together with our partners at  KOFAVIV, the Commission for Women Victims for Victims, we at Dd have designed, launched and tested the Call Center that is helping bring emergency care to victims in Port-Au-Prince. The KOFAVIV Call Center is supported by mobile-service providers Digicel and Voila, major phone providers in Haiti, where there is no 911 or similar system for reporting emergencies. Now, free calls to the number “572” connect victims to critical emergency care including medical, psychological and legal support.

The Call Center is one of four components of the Dd commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to use technology to address rape and gender-based violence (sGBV) with women in Haiti. Dd and KOFAVIV are seeking $150,000 to support the Call Center and expand its reach throughout Port-Au-Prince, announced Dd at the CGI Annual meeting today.

“When we first started working with Haitian women leaders, there was no accurate information on the increasing rates of sexual violence in the tent-camps,” explains Emily Jacobi, our Executive Director. “The Call Center is a key component of an information management system we built with KOFAVIV to accurately capture data on the real scope of the problem, and get urgent preventative care to the most vulnerable cases.”

A recent report from Human Rights Watch observes that earthquake recovery has largely failed Haitian women and girls, noting, “Emergency contraception and other post-rape care is available in some health facilities, but many rape victims don’t have access to this care for the same reasons that women and girls have difficulty accessing other health services: they lack basic information about what is available and where, or they have difficulty paying for transportation to reach the services.”

Our partnership with KOFAVIV directly addresses this lack of information. Women who contact the Call Center receive urgent personal care, but the information collected also contributes to the macro-solutions for the problem. KOFAVIV collects data on cases and uses a system built by Dd to generate monthly reports, maps and data visualization to share with government and international bodies that provide critical security and lighting.

“The technology trainings that began in 2010 have brought about a major change in the capacity of grassroots women, particularly us, the women of KOFAVIV,” say Malya Appolon and Eramithe Delva, co-founders of KOFAVIV. “They have given us more confidence in ourselves, and have given us tools to help more people understand the reality of those living in the camps, a reality that gets harder everyday.”

KOFAVIV and Dd first partnered in April 2010, building a comprehensive system that uses technology to improve the fight against sGBV in Haiti. The partnership is the cornerstone of Dd’s commitment to CGI, promising to provide Haitian women’s groups the technical tools and training needed in their work to create a comprehensive approach to prevent rape in Haiti with a coalition of lawyers, health and psychosocial service providers, and strong networks of Haitian women and girls.

KOFAVIV & Digital Democracy Database System

“572 not only provides support to victims, it represents urgent medical care. When a woman calls our number within 72 hours of an incident, we ensure she gets the medical care she needs to prevent transmission of disease, HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancy,” says Jocie Philistin, a Project Coordinator for KOFAVIV. “Medical support is the first step to receiving ongoing legal and psychological support.”

Through the first month of testing, the Call Center was promoted in 24 tent camps and communities by KOFAVIV’s network of 65 Community Outreach Agents, some police precincts and the General Hospital. Ready to accept calls from throughout Port-Au-Prince, the Call Center needs financial support to spread awareness across the city.

The Abundance Foundation, United States Institutes for Peace (USIP), the Channel Foundation, USAID/OTI and individual donors have supported Dd’s work in Haiti to date.

Press Release: Dd & KOFAVIV Launch Only Emergency Response System Dedicated to Rape and Sexual Violence in …

Techcamp was a fantastic experience, bringing together 18 facilitators & experts from around the digital space (Twitter, Facebook, VOA, NGOs) & activists and NGOs from the Russian speaking world (70+ organizations from 15 countries). I was the only facilitator translating for myself, thanks to my Russian upbringing. and so of course I cracked jokes & bonded over stories about the unique qualities of different parts of the region.

Secretary Clinton and Alec Ross speak at Techcamp Vilnius

A lot of why I do the work I do at Digital Democracy is because I see technology transcending the opposition politics that people know all too well in the post-Soviet. People feel exploited by their leaders and lied to by their journalists. But this is a unique time where citizens can speak to citizens, based on a new era of transparency. There was a palpable energy as people tried to strategize on what this might look like in their country.

Much of the conversation was centered around the fact that governments are cracking down on protesters, using tools like Twitter and Facebook, to identify and stop them. It seems they’re learning the lessons of Egypt & Tunisia, and using the tools that were popularized in the media as fostering dissent.

Yet there was a lack of understanding how tools beyond social media can be harnessed to educate citizens and get them to participate in new ways. I showed a local transparency initiative from Georgia and spoke about a corruption monitoring system we’re developing in Macedonia. There was a lot of excitement.

My focus was discussing the future of mobiles and how the proliferation of them means exciting opportunities to engage. From FrontlineSMS to Geochat and more, getting messages into people’s pockets and purses never seems to stimulate people’s imagination.

“Democracy” is still often seen as protests and elections. It’s an exciting time to expand these definitions and stimulate the creativity of fantastic local NGOs to do so.

At the same time, it’s dangerous and complicated. 20 colleagues who were visiting from Belarus were detained at the border when they tried to reenter their home country. Literacy doesn’t exist in a void of safety.

TechCamp Vilnius is one of a series of TechCamps being held around the world. Check it out and see if one is coming your way.

As a trainer, my goal was to unpack this conversation, understand local perspectives on it and get everyone registered for the different free and open source tools that have the most relevance. To aggregate the information, we used the tag #ukrainetech and pinned the central point of the conversation to ukrainetech.wordpress.com. Through interactive exercises trainees would come away with tangible experience and an open online conversation about library tech upon which to build in the future through social media.

The trainings were initiated by the IREX Global Libraries Program, a great project using libraries as catalysts for best serving communities’ changing needs. We started with a series of discussions around what types of technologies are currently being used in Ukraine and Romania, as it is important to identify the difference between the perceptions and realities on the ground. For example, its often interpreted in the USA that MySpace is a “dead” social network while in fact it has millions of users that are from marginalized communities. With social network analysis we found that Romania has approximately 2,045,700 users on Facebook out of a country of 22,000,000 (about 9%) while Ukraine has only 800,000 users out of a population of about 46,000,000 (about 2%). We were even able to drill down into the demographics of those users to map out methods of future outreach.

Mapping the physical infrastructure of the libraries and their connections is important in addition to the virtual. Location-based information is becoming increasingly important online, and certainly for libraries that want to emphasize where they are located in their communities. Natalia Martian, Media Coordinator, presented a case study on Ushahidi for outreach for the library program in Romania, based on a training I had done with Anca Rapeanu in Iraq. I also profiled how the tool was used in the emergency during the earthquakes in Haiti, the needs, the ability to work with volunteers, and the successes.

Digital Democracy’s “Jumpstarter” was a key new tool that we’ve been using in our trainings. Due to slow download speeds in many countries, it is an easy way to distribute free tools in a secure way. Often time is wasted downloading tools or worse, computers are corrupted with hacks and viruses as information is freely exchanged. The Jumpstarters have proven to be solid alternatives, and ones that include presentations, training materials and episodes of our interactive DDTV internet television show.

The trip was especially interesting for me, being that my family came from the region. In Soviet times, libraries were thriving institutions and received much support. Often, they were even part of community centers that also included movie theaters, a stage, and the post office. Now, as so many of those institutions were part of the past, it’s harder to conceptualize what the future will hold. But it’s exciting to consider how to reorganize these systems to be the fastest, most cost effective and still social methods of organizing. I look forward to future projects on the subject.

Special thanks to friend of Digital Democracy and library future Joe Murphy for additional help on this project. Also check out these additional resources:

• Тернопільська обласна бібліотека для молоді
• Української бібліотечної
• библиотека без барьеров
• Бібліотечний гопак
• Бібліотека ім. В. Маяковського

It was fascinating to be there at a time when the economy made us trillionaires. We found that despite the hardships, including a cholera outbreak, people were still using technology as a means of figuring out new ways to relate to one another. To read about our research and findings, please view and download our report below.

Thanks to the Arca Foundation and our individual donors who helped make the trip possible, and to all those on the ground who helped us during our travels, who aren’t mentioned here for their safety.

Digital Democracy Zimbabwe Research

Article on DDOS attacks in Myanmar newspaper

The tripʼs goals were to conduct research through data mapping, perform trainings, and create media profiles and organizations. Dd visited Mandalay Division, Rakhine/Arakan State and Yangon/Rangoon Division. Digital Democracy has previously conducted research with Burmese groups in Thailand, Bangladesh India and China, creating a comprehensive study on information in and around the county.

In the lead up to elections in the country, information access is becoming more suspect. Arbor Networks points out that the county once again fell off the Internet. Over the course of the past several days, their main Internet service provider, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication suffered a large, sustained DDoS attack disrupting most network traffic in and out of the country. The other ISP, Redlink is reporting similar data loss.

We’re proud to be launching our report on the state of ICT in the country to help contribute to the often misunderstood reality on the ground. Despite the growing and lively sectors, there are still major limitations and room for improvement. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or comments.

Digital Democracy Burma Report

Still reeling from the earthquake nine months ago and with elections later this month, what do Haitians living in the camps think about voting and the opportunities for changing their country? Last week, my colleagues Emily Jacobi, Emilie Reiser (aka “les deux Emilies”), and I traveled there to find out. Conducting a week-long training with our partners resulted in another profound week of learning, sharing, and exchange.

With the support of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP), Dd came to Haiti to help some 50 women representing grassroots women’s groups in Port Au Prince work more effectively for greater political and social rights in the lead up to national elections on November 28th. This training followed up on two previous trainings this year, in April and July respectively, during which Dd staff worked with Haitian women to use mobile phones, video, and photography to increase their access to political power and rights.  The focus of Dd’s work in Haiti has been to expand on the women’s understanding of and ability to use new communications and digital media tools to share their voice and report on their realities, this time, with a particular focus on Haitian democracy and the upcoming elections. As a part of this work, we sought to identify early warning indicators of election-related violence and how to report these findings to those who need to know.  Women from the camps – the women we are working with – have the most incentive to combat violence and protect themselves and their loved ones. Women are the most attuned to, most affected by, and most motivated to stop violence in their communities. They also possess critical and unique information that can save lives.

As a lawyer from our partner organization, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) commented during a meeting this week: “Haiti is a country built on social exclusion.” No group knows this more than Haitian women, who represent a mere 4% of seats in their parliament and only 10% of land-owners. When we asked the women participants about democracy, they eloquently explained how it is a concept foreign to their daily reality.  To put it in their words:

We don’t have democracy.

We vote for leaders who don’t protect us, who commit violence against us and our children, and use us to deepen their pockets.

We have no food, no water, no homes, no education, no security, and no respect for our rights.

Animals live better than we do.

They are spending money to get elected, and we still live in tents.

The training began with a group exercise in which women formed small groups and drew maps of their communities.  In total, eight maps of different parts of Port Au Prince were drawn and presented to the room by each group.  All eight maps contained some of the same information, despite having been developed separately by each group.  Most depicted garbage, latrines, and violence in the camps.  One group, with four of the youngest participants, drew the route from their home to KOFAVIV’s office – where we held the trainings. The map began with a school and when asked why the school was the largest object drawn, they responded that it was the “most important” and the thing “we want the most, so we drew it that way.”

Community Maps drawn by the women

After each group presented, I presented a map of my home: New York.  I drew the five boroughs, the East River and the Hudson, and the airport in Queens. I shared where Dd staff lives, where the Dd office is, and other information about NYC. Needless to say, my map differed significantly from the others taped to the wall. The women’s questions were illuminating: they asked me “are the rivers dangerous?”  “Is there violence in New York like there is in Haiti?”  One can only imagine the impossibility of fathoming a place like NYC, a place so unlike anything or anywhere they know.

Abby presents map of New York City

Following the mapping exercise, we switched modes to political participation, exploring their definitions of democracy and their views on the upcoming elections. Less than a month away from Haiti’s highly contentious elections, we did not know exactly what to expect in terms of views on this election and Haitian democracy in general, but anticipated great skepticism.  Haiti has struggled since it became a “democracy” more than 20 years ago to respond to the needs of its people.  Furthermore, the one time Haitians came out in droves to elect a representative leader, he was soon ousted by a military coup that left the country torn apart and people feeling disillusioned and powerless.  But regardless of whether Haiti can be called a “democracy” in reality, as well as name, we knew that women’s voices matter, their opinions are a necessary part of the overall dialogue, about this election, and all of the decisions affecting their lives.

We followed this up with a discussion of other ways to leverage power and push for changes. We discussed who funds the Haitian elections  – foreign countries including the U.S., EU and Japan – and how if the Haitian government doesn’t respond to the needs of Haitian women, their voices can still help to convince those supporting the process to take a different approach and/or pressure the Haitian government to make changes to better ensure the rights of its citizens in the democratic process. This led into a presentation of citizen reporting on elections in various countries around the world and how technology has enabled citizens to have a greater voice, and thus greater power, in affecting national politics and policies.

Another topic of discussion was barriers for women to meaningful participation in these elections, which turned into a series of group presentations on “reasons why we are not going to vote.” These reasons included, but were not limited to: still living in tents while politicians are “getting out the vote,” never having seen change by leaders they have voted for in the past, and most pervasive, concerns about security.

The women are asked if they have ID

One woman told us the story of having gone out to march to commemorate the anniversary of the founding of her organization, KONAMAVID, which was broadcast this fall on national television.  She said that since that day, she hasn’t slept in the same place two nights in a row because she has been receiving calls threatening her life.  If she received death threats for expressing her views and celebrating the work of her organization that day, one could only imagine the fear this woman and her colleagues feel when standing up for their rights publicly. We responded by talking about how technology can enable women to “march” virtually, anonymously, and more securely.

To this end, we brought together the discussions of democracy and meaningful participation in the political process with technology and the various mapping exercises we began our week with.  We introduced the ways in which citizens have used communications tools such as video, photography, phone calls, sms, and the internet to report on elections around the world and increase transparency and knowledge of realities on the ground.  We invited colleagues from Solutions, a Haitian technology company that oversees the noula.ht platform for mapping citizen reports in Haiti, to present the platform and how women can use it to safely report on violence and other injustices in their communities.  One of the presenters, Naomi, who is an operator who receives calls for Noula engaged the women by telling stories of threats she’s received, and doing mock calls with participants to orient them to how to report an incident by calling the 177 shortcode in Haiti.

Emily works with one of the smaller groups

We ended the training on Thursday with a day of smaller meetings with groups formed by dividing Port-au-Prince geographically into five loose neighborhoods where the women live. Each group took out a camera on Wednesday afternoon to aid their documentation, and on Thursday each individual reported on their homework – a case of injustice as well as a piece of news about the elections. While some cases were more general, many women came back with specific cases that had happened to their neighbors, families or themselves, such as the woman who had been beaten for her mobile phone, or a pregnant woman who was being refuges treatment. In reporting on injustice, one women from Cité-Soleil (a slum area of Port-au-Prince) had witnessed three cases of rape Wednesday night, and her colleague, also from Cité-Soleil, reported on election-related intimidation & harassment she had seen in her neighborhood that very morning, when a man had threatened to rip a candidate’s shirt off of a woman because he supported another candidate, who paid for his allegiance.

Last week, women participants of our training signed up to be “community agents” – a title they chose – who will come to the KOFAVIV office each week and work with Digital Democracy to report on early warning indicators of election violence as well as other problems facing their communities.  Dd’s Emilie Reiser will be staying on the ground and working with our partners to provide ongoing support over the next five weeks. She will be sharing regular updates on our findings and joint work and supporting the women’s ability to share their own reports as well as video and photographs.  Stay tuned…

For more images from last week’s training, please visit Dd’s Flickr page.

You can support Digital Democracy’s work in Haiti helping women to report gender-based violence, by visiting our site.