More women in ICT: Colnodo's campaign

 

Supporting women in ICT use, talking about their rights, and developing formative processes with communities to create digital enviroment free of violence against women is a bet from Colnodo, as a transverse axis in all its work. 

 

In this new version of the campaign, we developed sensitazion activities and tranining sessions with different audiences to address online rights, prevention of risks and advocacy topics. Since 2009, Colnodo has been part of the global campaign Dominemos La Tecnología – Take Back The Tech! 

 

10 years of campaigning

 

Celebrating 10 years of the existence of the campaign, for Olga Paz Martinez, administrative directress and from the appropriation area in Colnodo, “From our experience, we have developed many ICT appropiation processes with networks and organizations of women; we have done offline and virtual activities, seeking on the ground activities, that impplies a face to face relationship with women, for going deep into the topic of prevention of digital violence and knowledge about online rights.” Commemorating video of the 10 years of the campaign

 

Likewise, “One thing very important is that we are not just two or three women involved and participating in the projects of women's rights on digital spaces; we try to invite the whole human team in Colnodo to participate and this is because, we are a very multidisciplinary, diverse team, formed from people born in different regions of the country and with different ages.” This past November 24th we conduted a sharing session to present the products of this version of the campaign. Photos available here. And here are testimonies from people who have participated in the campaign: 

 

Over the years, the number of people involved in the campaign has increased, an reflection of the web development area in Colnodo. “For this version, we wanted to redesign the web site with the idea of getting a more accessible and attractive site for the people who visit us. The challenge was to consolidate a responsive development, which allows the screen to adapt to any screen size from a device.” For Andrea Rodríguez, coordinator of Web Projects Area in Colnodo, besides involving professional skills, it was about personal impact and sparking passion among the team on these topics. “The campaign has helped me in my personal and professional growth because now I see that with every action we do, we decrease the digital divide for women and girls. It is a reflex of why it is important to set the topic every time to build the internet as a space where our voices can be heard, acting with responsibility, security and respect”. 

 

For María del Rosarío Ortiz, graphic designer in Colnodo, this experience is really constructive. “Seeing how the campaign is built based on the knowledge and experiences of women in Colnodo, we know we are empowering women through technology and making them more aware of how to avoid or face this digital violence.”

 

“To move around the global campaign objectives of Take Back The Tech is an important challenge for all of us as the actions are developed. We have a commitment for building creative actions on the topic of women's digital rights, security online, women's participation in ICT, and of course, for building in a collective form new ways of acting inside the digital enviroment,” says Beatriz Alarcón, Coordinadora del proyecto Derechos de las Mujeres en los Espacios Digitales.

 

For Beatriz in the 2016 campaign, when was reached 10 years of collective actions about women participation on ICT, the main focus was on reaching new sectors and groups of people in order to continue strengthening the work done over the years, but especially, “seeking to involve other reflections, such as academia, young women, and government institutions, all of which has very much to offer from their own experiences and possibilities to achieve a more inclusive internet, free of VAW.” 

 

Participation in public events

  

In each process, to share achievements and learnings with new people and audiences is very important. In this opportunity, the Campaign Dominemos la Tecnología was presented in some relevant spaces. Highlights include:

Innovative training resources

One of Colnodo's focus areas has been building capacity of people through dynamic and integral pedagogic strategies to transform their quality of life. For civil society and women's rights activitsts, we designed the virtual course Safe Women on the Internet: Opportunities and Challenges. To reach young women between 16 and 30 years old, the mobile app PiensaEnTIC (ThinkinICT) about digital security was developed. To work with public officials who can support women victims of digital violence, we designed an educational primer with basic information about safe digital environments for women and their rights. 

The virtual course was held through a Moodle e-learning space and was addressed to a wide range of people, specially to public officers, all of whom might work for women victims of digital violence; professionals of different disciplines, interested on topics related to participation, digital rights and online security of women; and people involved in projects for digital inclusion.
 

This course had 20 hours of dedication from students and it four main units with the following content: 

The virtual course had the participation of 129 people from12 countries (Ecuador, Perú, Venezuela, Bolivia, Uruguay,  Argentina, Chile, Paraguay,  El Salvador, México, Colombia y España). From them, 25 participants were certified for completing more than 70% of the course. Find more about the course here.    

This resource is an original development from Colnodo, designed as a digital diary, available on Google Play and App Store, with six activities to address such topics of digital security as encrypted information or metadata. It is open source and the user can explore the following parts: 

Find out more here. 

 

As Laura Mesa, web developer in Colnodo, says, it is important to sensitize young women about “how easy it is to pull out information through what they publish on social media and have on their cellphones without any restriction or security. It's important that they know the information that might be sensitive but appears to them like a normal thing, having a risk of later discovering that information as something bad for them if someone with bad intentions publishes it.”

The primer presents women's online rights and basic information to understand the topic and generate reflections and answers from public officers that serve women victims of digital violence, avoiding revictimization and trivialization of their situations. 

 

Social Media 

In the most recent versions of the campaign, communication through social media and the integration of it with mass media has been strategic to publish, spread, connect and diffuse the different activities. The social media account for the campaign was visually dressed for the 16 Days. Diverse graphic materials were designed and posted as stickers, calendars, and other media. More than 90 messages were sent using different hashtags, mainly #DominemosLaTecnología and #TackBackTheTech. For the 2016 campaign, we had the finantial support of Twitter with 5000 USD of TwitterAds. During the 16 Days of Activism, on social media we achieved 139,100 diary impressions on Twitter, reaching a total of 1,826,600 impressions, as well as 8,656 interactions and 6,362 new followers on the account, going from 3,200 to more than 9000. Also, we achieved a total of 451,152 people reached on Facebook, having 10,101 interactions.