Anyone can be an Activist

What excited me about Web 2.0 is its potential: Web 2.0 is a powerful platform; it allows the ordinary human to become a political/social activist from their bedroom. It equips the ordinary human with a voice; a voice that can be heard, a voice that can create revolutions and it is a platform which has the potential to mobilise hundreds if not thousands of supporters, revolutionaries and visionaries. Potential is powerful but it means nothing if it is not realised.

Web 2.0 can create, develop and sustain existing and emerging global women’s empowerment. The key word here again is ‘potential’; it is the potential that excites me. I am sitting over here in London but my facebook and twitter feed is exploding with news from all over the world .Within a few key strokes I am acquainted with the Gulabi Gang in India, I share in Mulala’s joy in starting her fund to help women and girls and I am inspired by the likes of Aloisea Inyumba , Emmeline Pankhurt, Rosa Parks and Benazir Bhutto.

Through a couple of clicks I see horrific images of women from Pakistan who have suffered acid violence at the hands of their so-called protectors, I read of Syrian/Iraqi women being forced into prostitution in the wake of the ‘war on terror’, I am shook to the core when I read of ‘child brides’ because I can’t even imagine what they must be going through, I am horrified and sickened when I see a child dressed as a bride sitting with a man old enough to be her grandfather, in the photo I can feel her fear and helplessness.

Stories of abuse, stories of fear, stories of genital mutilation, breast ironing and violence against women happen globally. We only hear of them because of tools such as facebook, Blog sites, Twitter and YouTube. Rape is now an official weapon of war, how do I know this? It is because of Web 2.0.

Collectively the solution is in raising awareness, generating solidarity and using web2.0 and tools of social media to make changes by challenging policies that allow such atrocities to happen.

What do I hope to do with Web 2.0? I will continue doing what I am doing. I will tell their stories. I work as a domestic violence caseworker, through my writings I will challenge the very institutions , the very social structure that still ostracises the woman that is abused and blames her, makes her feel guilty, she then continues to suffer and silently teaches her daughters to suffer and her sons to perpetrate violence. Through Web 2.0 and its tools I will, with others break this cycle and lift the silence on domestic violence, Locally. Nationally. Globally.