APC member in South Africa, Women’sNet, is launching a number of innovative projects concerning women, internet and media. "Recording Women & Gender Issues" builds capacity for collaborative gender programming in the community radio sector. "She-Bytes" is a new audio website featuring dramas and public service announcements were created by girls aged 12 to 16 covering different themes and are in a range of South African languages. Read more about these gender and technology initiatives and others.
In 2003, Women’sNet in partnership with the National Community Radio Forum (NCRF) and Agenda, embarked upon an Open Society Foundation sponsored project called "Recording Women & Gender Issues". The project aims to help increase capacity for collaborative gender programming in the community radio sector and increase the visibility of women, women’s voices, and gender concerns in community radio broadcasts.
The production work for the last double-CD box set is underway and will be dispatched to the NCRF’s Gender Network for local programming incorporation within the upcoming weeks. In total, the project will have yielded 26 "seed" productions (varying in length, format and language). The seeds are used as the basis of hour-long gender programming produced and broadcast by the community radio stations.
She-Bytes
Women’sNet will be also be launching its audio web site "She-Bytes" in the next month. This space will be used to house audio programmes and related resources. Alongside the Recording Women seed programmes, audio productions from the Girls Digital Audio Project will also be featured. These dramas and public service announcements were created by girls aged 12 to 16 covering different themes and are in a range of South African languages.
She-Bytes will also be sourcing and linking to other diverse topical audio programmes available for listening and downloading in MP3 and WAV formats from the Internet. Look forward for more news on the website! You can write to Sally-Jean Shackleton to be included in the website or to add your own audio programmes: sallys@womensnet.org.za
Girl’sNet
In 2004 Women’sNet, introduced a youth project called Girl’sNet. This first phase of Girl’sNet involves fun provincial training camps, each with its own theme (such as children’s rights or gender based violence). The girls work using different multimedia processes to develop content for the new and exciting Girls’ Net web site. The project encourages girls to use technology for their own development by telling their stories and networking with each other.
Since its beginning, 66 girls from four provinces (Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal) have been trained in basic computer literacy, writing and developing content for the Internet. The girls have started adding stories, poems and information to the draft website, using an open source content management tool first developed by the APC technical community called ActionApps.
