Information Communications Technology Activism

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ICTs for Feminist Movement Building: Activist Toolkit

A new toolkit, for using information communications technologies has drawn on the experiences of women activists, mainly in southern Africa, to outline effective use of ICT’s to bring about real change. 

The well laid out and simple to use kit focuses on women’s rights activists, and the extraordinary potential of ICTs to make campaigns for social justice more powerful in new and wider spaces.

By Just Associates (JASS, Women’sNetAssociation for Progressive Communications (APC)

Activists around the world use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to speak out and stand up against injustice, to take action against violence and inequality, and build movements for transformative change. But the big questions for many activists remain: How do we tell our own stories and make ourselves heard? How do we tell stories that empower and inspire, and challenge mainstream stories that tend to silence, erase women’s lives, experiences and voices? How do we communicate with each other and with people beyond our movements? What is the best way to develop messages that reach out to people and make our movements bigger? What tools make the most sense for our context and capacity?  How can we communicate safely and securely in a world that has become increasingly risky for activists and women’s rights activists online and offline?

ICTs for Feminist Movement Building: Activist Toolkit We hope will help YOU to:

  • Experiment and be creative about communicating
  • Think about how communications can help to build movements for social justice
  • Fight gender stereotypes and Amplify women’s voices so they can tell their own stories
  • Design strategies that make sense for their organisations and movements
  • Be safe, be smart and be secure!

The toolkit aims to assist activists to think through their communication strategies in a way that supports movement building. It offers an exciting and practical guide to writing a communication strategy and reviews a number of tools (ICTs) and technology-related campaigns which can be used in organising work. At the core, this toolkit is also about feminist practice and how to use tools to communicate in ways that are democratic, amplify women’s voices whilst challenging stereotypes and discriminatory social norms. We hope it will assist activists in making creative, safe and sustainable choices in using ICTs in our communication strategies.

JASS, in partnership with Women’s Net and APC, is proud to present the ICTs for Feminist Movement Building: Activist Toolkit to support more effective, resilient, visible and safe movements by helping activists to understand ICTs, influence how they are developed, and empower ourselves to use them and harness them to make a difference.

The tool kit is attached below or individual chapters may be downloaded from here