Grants:TPS/WikiMujeres/AWID 2016 Forum/Report

Delegation at AWID Forum 2016

Event name

Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) 2016 Forum

Participant connections

Numbers

• Participants at "Feminist Organizing and the Digital Commons" panel session: 30 + 5 presenters
• Participants mapping Whose Knowledge? gaps and opportunities in online knowledge: 50
• Participants learning about editing Wikipedia: 8
• Feminist activists photographed for Commons: 30+
• We're following up with at least 30 potential partners and connections we made throughout the conference.

Stories and encounters

Zainah Anwar finally has a picture for her Wikipedia article.

• So many useful conversations about Whose Knowledge? and Wikipedia! Here's a taste of one: I participated in an interesting conversation during the pre-conference day, Imagining a Feminist Internet. We broke into a large group, facilitated by Ghanaian blogger Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, to discuss online content creation and knowledge-sharing. The group listed a lot of sites they consider to have feminist content, while noting that they mostly didn't contribute to that content. We discussed whether activists should engage with Wikipedia, and how, and many noted how upsetting it is for those who have often been invisibilized (especially as women, people of color, people from the global South, LGBTQI, etc) to be made doubly invisible when their content is not attributed. Notable Muslim feminist Zainah Anwar said that she also sometimes sees it as a sign of success when Muslim feminist knowledge was plagiarized online, though, too, because the knowledge is being shared more widely. We walked out with a new slogan: "Plagiarize my feminist knowledge! But please attribute it too :)" Siko (talk) 18:05, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Summary of breakout sessions at Feminist Organizing and the Digital Commons: Practices, pitfalls and promise presentation.

• I helped plan and present the panel session Practices, pitfalls and promise: Learning from efforts to bring together feminist organizing and the digital commons. During this session, panelist and participants told stories about their own experience using the internet to advance their mission. Many participants spoke of problems related to safety and security, and the importance of addressing it in order to address harassment and create a friendly working environment. During this session (and during the rest of the conference) I collected the names of organizations who have created materials and tech solutions to harassment. Since returning from the conference I have shared the information with WMF staff in the Community Engagement Department and plan further follow up at WikiConference North America. Additionally, at the conference I identified people who are affiliated with organizations that create, research, or publish cultural diverse health content, and since returning from the conference I've began following up. Lori Adelman, Associate Director, Global Communications for Planned Parenthood Global is connecting me with health topic experts around the globe that can assist in women's health articles. - FloNight
• I participated in several interesting conversations during the pre-conference day and during the sessions of the conference. They dealt with reflections on cross-cultural movement strategies and challenges, how to hold companies and governments accountable for tech-based VAW, intergenerational leadership and the co-creation of new spaces. We were able to discuss with other Spanish speakers the differences and similarities between countries and tech-based initiatives and orgs - us from the Wikimedia perspective, others from different tech orgs. It was very enriching - there is a certain universality about certain problems, and it is interesting to see what has worked for other groups. Preservation of knowledge and culture in places like Africa -particularly related to women- was flagged as a very serious concern, and there is there an intersection with Wikimedia projects if we can find a way to make it work. In this vein we also discussed LGBTQ history and rights in Asia. Raystorm (talk) 08:58, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Farida Shaheed at the forum

• I had many fascinating conversations about Whose Knowledge? and Wikimedia at the AWID Forum. But one of my most delightful (and delighted) stories is of supporting Lebanese activist Nadine Moawad, to learn how to create a well-sourced and written Wikipedia article. We uploaded a stub on Isatou Touray, and then spoke of her first foray into Wikipedia editing in 2010, with a stub on a Lebanese women's rights advocate. Nadine had felt upset with the way a patroller had treated her then, and thought her article had been deleted. We went looking for it. Not only does the article continue to exist - Laure Moghaizel - but it has since been improved by over 10 other editors, and translated into both Arabic and French. By the time we finished our Wikipedia editing session, Nadine was planning an editathon in Beirut! I also had the joy of adding one of Wotancito's pictures to an article I had begun in 2014 on Farida Shaheed, and one of mine to the article on Zainah Anwar. :-) Anasuyas (talk) 00:03, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Outcomes

Mapping Whose Knowledge is missing from the internet

Mapping the feminist internet

Shared Experiences:

• Over 50 AWID 2016 photos and videos from the event, on Commons
• Blog posts pre- and post- the Forum:
  • A blog post on Whose Knowledge?, written as a run-up to the Forum
  • An blog post on mapping and our delegation written for the GenderIT.org website after the Forum
• 2 of us will be bringing our experiences to conversations at WikiConference North America in early October
• Members of our delegation were interviewed by Amnesty International, Radio Palabra, and a French feminist media organisation. We'll add links to publications if/when we receive them.

New Creations:

• Proposed Whose Knowledge? User Group formed during the event.
• Map of the feminist internet - data from pilot workshop
• Map of knowledge gaps/opportunities - data from pilot workshop
• Articles created/improved at the event (by attendees or Wikipedians online supporting us):
  1. Isatou Touray
  2. Homa Hoodfar in Arabic, Spanish, and Farsi
  3. Asociación para los Derechos de las Mujeres y el Desarrollo
  4. Myrna Cunningham
  5. Sandbox work on PT:WP Brazilian activist Mãe Beth de Oxum
  6. Sandbox work on Wikisource for the Feminist Principles of the Internet
  7. Photos of 30 women activists on Commons are slowly being incorporated into Wikipedia articles since our return.

(See our worklist in progress)

• Collection of materials and potential partners & collaborations for WMF anti-harassment/civil internet campaign

Finances

All airfare, hotel and registration for 4 participants was paid directly in advance by the WMF. We believe that total costs were close to the expected budget.

Amount left over

All funds were spent as anticipated. If any funds do still remain underspent from the total approved amount, we'd like to request reimbursement for the $80 visa fees of the one member of our delegation who had a visa requirement to enter Brasil.

Anything else

Slide presentation at AWID 2016.

• Success! Delegation: We know that sending a group delegation was unusual for TPS funding, and we're so grateful to have been able to attend as a group. Being a group of 5 allowed us to lead and document multiple meaningful sessions, to bring our multiple skillsets to shared projects with enough hands for facilitating, editing, filming and photographing, and to build connections with a broader range of attendees around our diverse interests.
• Challenge! Internet: Although we were prepared for the venue to have poor internet connection, the challenges of imagining a feminist internet with very little internet were very real! Thanks to the Association for Progressive Communications for giving us space in their Feminist Internet eXchange hub, and to the Wikipedians around the world who helped create content based on the small inputs we could offer with limited bandwidth.

Any questions? :-)