I can’t believe how quickly our 3 months have flown by. And now we arrive at the final week. I sincerely hope that everyone who has participated in these discussions (participants and mentors) have learnt a lot from the information exchange and will continue to promote the use of social media and other ICTs in their professional and personal endeavours - particularly in promoting gender equity and empowering women the world over.

Many, many, many thanks go to Shannon and Meaghan for so excellently facilitating and mentoring last week’s discussions.

To round off the Networking for Success project blog discussions, we have Gbenga Sesan and Babatope Soremi.

Tope Soremi has been an active ICT4D advocate and facilitated social
responsibility initiatives using ICTs since 2002. He was Coordinator, Nigerian Youth ICT4D Network and a volunteer partner with Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN) when it first started.

Gbenga Sesan is a social entrepreneur and information society researcher. He is currently Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, where he promotes and supports youth-led social entrepreneurship.

Gbenga and Tope will be discussing Progress & Challenges: Using ICTs in Nigeria, which I hope will be a great way to cap-off this project. I look forward to engaging and fruitful discussions from everyone.

It has been a real pleasure to be involved in this discussion this week. I think you all have some really great ideas for using technology and I hope to see the outcomes of your participation with this program! One thing stands out to me from your comments and posts: that technology provides a way to connect (easily, safely) with other women, and that that is the key to the social change you’re trying to build.

Many of you expressed thoughts of how you’d like to use online tools, especially social networking tools. Here’s one tip that I learned from you: start small. Although I originally posted about the use of online tools to bring together millions of women in Washington, D.C., you reminded me that that might not be what your communities need, or want, right now. But that’s not the only use of online tools. And some of the flashy social networking tools that we’re using in the States might not be what you need, either. It’s definitely possible to create a vibrant online community by launching an email list, and maybe that’s a good place to start.

Another tip I’d like to share is this: use what’s out there. It might be tempting to build a new social network to bring Nigerian women together online, and that’s certainly one way to do it. In fact, if you want to create one for free, right now, you can do it on Ning. But it probably makes more sense to take advantage of existing networks. I confess, I don’t know that much about Nigerian websites or to what extent Nigerians are using existing social networks like Facebook, MySpace or Orkut. But maybe you can find or form a group of women using one of these networks — or any other online network that you may use more often.

Finally, I leave you with this tip: ask for help and use it when it’s offered. One of the greatest benefits of an online community is the possibility to get help from others. As Shannon mentioned, Twitter is a great resource — please follow me if you like, or check out this list of a few people in Nigeria using Twitter. If you watch the conversations on Twitter, you’ll find that we ask each other questions a lot and get great answers from people with lots of different perspectives. Please feel free to reach out to me and the other mentors in this program, as well as other technology people that you know. We love to help others learn how to do this stuff!

-Meaghan

Apart from few women focused NGO in Nigeria who have web, blog sites, etc, most non-governmental organisation do not deem it important to have a website, talk more of blogsites, I am sure if you mention the word  blog most of them will look as if they have heard a foreign language. This brings us to why ICT tools are important to development work. With the little experience I have had these few weeks,  I found out that most women coalitions would have thrive better if members have this knowledge and if coalitions have been able to build social networking sites for members use.

I want to use this medium to create awareness for non profit organisation, especially women focused ones; that it is imperative for them  to enhance or build the capacities of members  to  use  ICT tools and also make use of social networking sites whichever they feel is suitable for their work. With these social networking sites women will be able to articulate their voices and also speak in one voice; and proffered solutions to their problems on time without any delay. Also most women issues could be raised and promoted in some of the social networking sites; and others could view information on how Nigerian women coalitions are contributing to the development of the society.

I wanted to post another quick entry about what is currently my favorite place to interact with my online community - twitter.

Twitter is what’s called a “microblogging” tool. In a nutshell, you’re supposed to tell everyone, in 140 characters or less, what you’re doing right now.  When I first joined twitter, I truly felt as though it was the most worthless, arrogant thing I’d ever heard of. I could not imagine why anyone would care about the mundane things I was doing, nor could I imagine sharing those details with the world.

As time went on, however, I find myself ‘following’ people on twitter that share my same interests. I started learning from them, and then found myself growing as well. I also connected with a lot of people using twitter in my local area and have come to really regard them as close friends and many of us meet in person every few weeks for a meal and spend some time sharing with each other.

For anyone that’s interested, my twitter name is “micala” and you can follow me here. Twitter is free, easy, and a great way to connect with people.

-Shannon

Thanks Shanon for the good job you ‘re doing.With the use of social networking sites i believe a vibrant online community will be built. and a community of people who are interested in similar issues and activities or of others can be established. With these tools your knowledge is broadened and you’re more enlightened.

It’s also helps to keep and maintain relationships with people (relatives and friends), either new or old, with the social networking sites you can stay in touch, no matter the distance. for instance i’ve met some of my old friends and I got to meet one person I’ve been longing to see for over 12 years and you can imagine how surprised she was. She has changed location, now engaged and in fact living big. The use of these tools is really good for the empowerment of women.

Thanks Meagan. Truth is, No. I have not used social networking sites to organize any offline action. You can not have a one-million march in Nigeria just like that except you want to get tear-gased by the police.

May be Ore Somolu could use this site to organize a one-million march to create ICT awareness for women in Nigeria(lol). We could start at Oshodi/Ojuelegba bus-stops as take off points since there are no functional train stations here in Nigeria.

Anyway, I believe in Wtec. We could get some ICT firms to support us financially/provide training materials/instructors for Wtec, organize workshops, work hand-in-hand with Wtec. The women will not have a one-million march but could have their progress showcased on air by getting sponsorship from some of these firms. It would be good for their corporate image and would enhance active participation of women in ICT using Wtec as a forum for this.

Anyway, keep the spirit up. Cheers. Marie.

Hi

I want to thank our mentor this week for the great job they are doing. Kudos!

I think the best way to keep women busy while staying at home is to empower them with online networking tools thereby though this women are cut off from people while performing their duties as wives they are also in contact with the world through this tools.

They share ideas, concepts and even gain opportunities that ordinarily doing their professional jobs wouldn’t have given them time to. These are things that the classroom and office palce can’t teach. i personnally wish to see our generation of women become empowered in all aspects of life.

Thanks!

Hello! I posted this before and mistakenly deleted it again so I have to post again.

I am Celine Osato Eguavoen, an indigene of bini from Oredo Local Government area of Edo State- South-South Nigeria. I am the first and only girl in the family of three. I have two brothers.

I did my primary and secondary education here in Lagos. I attended Methodist Primary School, then Air Force Secondary School Ikeja. I later went to Nigerian Institute Of Journalism where I got my OND in Public Relations.

I presently work as a secretary in a church Living Witness Christian Centre, Ogba.

I enjoy reading and trying my hands on new things.

That’s all about me for now

To both our mentors this week I say thank you. You have helped me to further appreciate the power of such tools as we are learning about in this W-tec program.

Personally, one of the things I’ll love to use this for is to develop a community for women (mothers in particular).

A lot of mothers stay at home during their child-rearing years. Others return to work after a period of maternity leave(which can be long or short-depending on your employer).This period of time is particularly challenging especially for first time mothers who may not know what to expect, or those whose expectation totally differs from the reality facing them! Some are able to conduct business/work from home while some for one reason or the other are not. This period of time I believe is a time that one needs the support of like-minded people, who are able to appreciate the challenges of such a time.

With the use of the social networking tools, one should be able to bring together a community of mothers who can support one another, exchanging tips and ideas on how to get the best out of every phase of motherhood/childrearing. I look forward to doing this!

As I read Shannon’s post, I was struck by how similar her experiences had been to mine — in terms of the connections made with people online, and most especially, how many of those online experiences had turned into real-world interactions and relationships. That’s what I’d like to discuss with today’s post: what’s the value of online-only communities?

The importance of vibrant online communities is not to be underestimated. Without a doubt, the internet has facilitated communication and connection where geography, politics, gender, weather, war, any number of factors may have prevented it, thus uniting disparate voices to share common experiences or to unite to fight injustice. But some of the most successful results of building community online are the offline outcomes.

For example, my colleagues at EchoDitto worked with Howard Dean in the presidential election of 2004. They built a powerful online community of “Deaniacs” and while some major measures of success happened entirely online — fundraising comes to mind, of course — one of the real highlights of the online campaign was the ability to bring together supporters in coffee shops and restaurants in their hometown. Through the use of Meetup.com and other online tools, supporters of Howard Dean were able to connect online with other supporters, and then meet offline to discuss the election, debate policy, and plan actions to work for Dean’s election. These offline meetings took the relationships to a new level and, I think, cemented the sense of community that was sparked online.

Other examples include many of the mass marches and rallies that happen in Washington, D.C. On April 25, 2004, I was one of over a million people who took to the streets of the United States capital to support women’s reproductive rights. Although we all arrived there by car, bus or train, it was largely through online organizing that those millions of people organized themselves to attend the rally. We again used sites like Meetup.com to plan our bus trips with local supporters; some organizations provided tools on their websites where we could find potential roommates or carpoolers. Without the online tools available, I doubt the march would have been half it’s size; but it often takes an offline event to mobilize so many people.

So the point of all this is to say that while we should take all advantage we can of the online tools that are available, we can’t forget that sometimes the best strategic outcomes for those online actions are offline results. At least, this has been my experience.

But I’d love to hear more from you — In your country, does it make sense to use the internet to try to bring people together for a real-world event? What have you tried? What has worked for you and what didn’t work?