Empowering women through ICTs: An experience in the newly created district of Namaingo in Eastern Uganda

As part of the campaign to combat violence against women using ICTs, Isis-WICCE with support from Association for Progressive Communication (APC) conducted a training on VAW and ICT from November 15-19, 2010 at Hukeseho Women’s Group, Lwangosia, Namaingo district. The training was attended by 23 grassroots women’s rights activists from six sub counties. The purpose of the training was to equip women leaders as well as women living with HIV & AIDS with ICT skills to enable them create platforms and opportunities for women to engage with ICT to address violence against women and girls.

The training emphasized the use of new tools of communication for communication, the intersection between ICTs and VAW, use of mobile telephone applications for advocacy, Computer and Microsoft Word skills, Internet and web2.0 applications(blogging) and citizen Journalism.

During the training, a 59 year old participant shared an experience of how women in the olden days creatively used local platforms to combat violence against women. She shared that when she was growing up as a young girl, women used to look for a strategic location in the village which was usually an anthill. The woman would stand on top of the anthill and start shouting about the bad behaviors the husband has and she would say “my husband is bad, she beats me when I give meat to the children, he is a glutton, he doesn’t want me to do this that and that….” So that everyone in the village hears about her husband’s bad behaviors which would prompt the villagers to gossip about him, musicians would compose songs about his bad behaviors and he would be ashamed and eventually change his behaviors. http://tumbula.wordpress.com/vaw-and-ict-training/