The Women's Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC)

About W.TEC

Mission and Vision | Our Work | Background | Our People | Our Board

Background

The Women's Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC) was started in 2008. The idea for the organisation was born when Founder/Executive Director Oreoluwa Somolu was conducting research for her Masters degree thesis on how technology use by women in developing countries could contribute to development. The research showed that technology had significant contributions to make to the development and growth of a country. However, women - a significant proportion of the population - were severely lagging behind in their knowledge and use of technology.

W.TEC's first project will be the Networking for Success project, which will run from May to August 2008. Networking for Success is aimed at facilitating collaboration between women from the non profit and social development fields using a combination of technologies primarily blogs, wikis and podcasts. Participants on the Networking for Success project will learn how to use web 2.0 tools to collaborate on projects. This work is supported by a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), as part of the Harambee Project.

Networking for Success builds-up on the work of a pilot project, Blogs for African Women (BAWo), which was conducted from May to July 2006, in partnership with Fahamu and Pambazuka News and which instructed a group of young ladies (aged 11 to 13) in the use of blogs.