Mobile Cafe for Rural Women

I began to workwith Freedom House, USA on a research on how women access the internet in rural Nigeria early 2016. The issue of women and girls's access to the internet is an issue that must be addressed if no woman is to be left behind as the world develops technologically.

The rural female folks in Nigeria are not factor into the development of free flow of information across the globe via internet super highway. The neglect of rural women and girls in internet community in Nigeria has affected their wholesome development which makes the very ambitious rural female folks to travel extra miles to access internet.

This has limited their opportunities in life due to challenges encountered with in access to internet and the other societal hindrances placed on the path of female gender generally as internet platform has male dominance when compare with female gender. Statistically, the rural women and girls made up of 45% of Nigeria population has shown that talent and human resources are being wasted because very marginal percentage of rural women and girls can compete with their counterpart from the urban centres which is due to limited and or non-opportunities in the rural communities.

In response to identified gap of either deliberate exclusion of rural women and girls in Nigeria from internet access or pure unintended exclusion of rural female folks from having access to internet, this intervention seeks to address and reduce the gap so far identified with regard to access to opportunities on internet. The national survey conducted this year showed that rural women and girls access to information is largely premised on other means of communication other than internet.

Therefore, at the end of the research, wedecided to act, no matter how small the action is, it will surely make impacts. I want to do something because of my discovery. We have discovered that many women living in rural areas would like to come online but the unavailability of cyber café in their community discourages them a lot of times.

Mobile Cafe for rural women

The main goal of Mobile cafe for rural women is to initiate traffic flow of sixhundred (600) rural women and girls to internet platform/communities such as World Pulse, within Bridge the gap of urban and rural women and girls access to internet platform/communities in 2016

Some of our objectives include:

1. To stimulate keen interest of rural women and girls by logging into internet platform/communities at least thrice a week within two (2) months


2. To train two hundred (600) rural women and girls on how to search for on-line opportunities within two months


3. To build skills of rural women and girls on how to write comments on at least two social media platform and respond to issues


4. To display skills and ability on navigation of internet by rural women and girls


5. To increase the number of frequency and usage of internet search engine by rural women and girls trained


6. To live and stay above as well as overcome any form of internet threat

In order to achieve our goals, we decided to workwith some of our sisters who are living in rural Nigeria and discovered how tedious it is for women in rural Nigeria to access the internet.

It was a herculean task for rural women and girls access the internet in rural communities in Nigeria.

I believe that everywoman who can read and write has every right to the internet, because online is the only space in the world where women are free to air their opinions without fear. Especially if the woman finds herself in a SAFE space like World pulse;this is because World Pulse is an onlinecommunity where women can feel safe to express their deepest, hurt, desire, challenges and joy without any fear or any inhibition.

On World pulse, we cannot be too happy, too sad, or talk too much. We are always free to be who we want to be; unlike the so called real world, where women will have to think thrice before expressing their opinions. As a woman, I will think about what my community Pastor will say, how the community leader will react to my opinion and how my husband will feel, if he hears that I express my opinion in the midst of a thousand people.

Whereas, on World Pulse where we have more than fifty thousand people online, when I open the community door, I will go to MY PULSE, express my view, shut the door by logging out and sleep peacefully without nightmaresbecauseI know that I am safe and my voice if free and the expected comments from fellow users are nurturing COMMENTS. Nobody can gag my mouth on World Pulse. That is why every woman deserves her safe space online.

Personal attempt

The first attempt was tackling the identified community where women will have to travel for 22 kilometres by a motor bike to the nearest cybercafé, the cost of transportation is ten times the cost of payment to use a desktop in the nearest cyber café, so I decided to support one of our World Pulse sisters, living in that community to set up a cyber café in that village.

Challenges

When I informed the World Pulse sister who lives in Cross River state in a community without a cyber cafe about my decision to support her in establishing a cyber café in her community, she was very excited. I sent the first consignment of desktops to her from Lagos to Ogoja, Cross Rivers, Nigeria, it took 8 days to arrive, instead of one day, they arrived butall broken.

The driver refused to deliver them to her, he delivered the computers in another town and she had to pay in order to receive them via another driver, it was a mess, I was very sad. She was frustrated too. I had to send some money to her so that she would be able to repair the computers. Her café will take off soon.

There and then, I knew that I need to do more. Miraculously, Freedom House, USA that contracted me for the research contacted me again, they had decided to do something-I came up with an advocacy proposal and they decided to fund the it.

The plan was to train only 200 women in two communities, and to introduce them to World Pulse but it was later increased to 600 women, I was over excited and quickly agreed to the proposal. I was a rural woman, who was helped byWORLD PULSE, thisonline community to become an International woman.

Every woman, living in the rural community, will become great if they have the same opportunity given to me by World Pulse. IF NOT for God and World Pulse, I will still be selling used things by the road side, I may become better by now, but I will not become the best version of me that I am today.

Today, my goal is to help any rural woman without access to the internet to use our laptop to access the internet and avail herself of the opportunities online. The mobile café is just the beginning, the dream is far from just accessing the internet for a day. It will unveil as times goes on.

Tomorrow, myjob will be todrive these same rural women to the Nigeria Internationalairport, when they will be travelling abroad, as they willbecome selected speakers for World Pulse events in the USA and other parts of the world. Amen.