EWAMT 7th workshop participants

Napoleon Bonaparte once said: “let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.” The same is true for every nation. One can hope that the Rising Voices grantee from Yemen ‘Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques (EWAMT)’ can make such impact. Ghaida'a al-Absi in collaboration with the Hand in Hand Initiative is organizing new media training course for female politicians, activists, and human right workers of Yemen to bring more women's voices to the internet and empower them. She shares an interesting experience gathered during the seventh workshop of the project:

On Thursday 15 October, 2009 we hold a workshop on blogging and social networking for ten activists. These activists were really talkative and full of energy. It is like a magic, every time you train new women activists, you got some energy from them.

Sadiq al-Samawi introducing Facebook

The day-long workshop anchored by Ghaida'a included tips like how to blog via email and in the afternoon session Sadiq al-Samawi taught the participants how to use facebook.

Now let us look at some of the blog posts published by the participants of the 7th workshop.

Safa writes about an important issue – the spread of drug abuse in Yemen.

Smile To Life discusses the shocking spread of AIDS and how to raise awareness to prevent this disease.

Dove creativity posts a poem called ‘silent heart‘.

Lafraaaaacp adventure defines love:

Love is when all your interest is about the happiness of your beloved without thinking of yourself.

Sarah loves the children stories and drawings and wishes to post about these.

Meanwhile here are snippets from the blogs of some of the participants of the previous workshops:

Pearl, who writes at Shells blog talks about how a women is forced to do something she does not want because she is deemed weaker in the society. She screams:

“Why don't you understand that we have the right to choose.”

Kholoud at Ambitious Project mentions about another kind of rape:

Image courtesy Kholoud

There are raped ideas .. raped success .. and even raped feelings .. usurpation of land and other types of rape. The most hideous of this is the rape of innocence .. the rape of children. Children raped and stripped from all their rights..
The right to play
To learn
To a dignified life and secure … and are locked up in a dark cave, which is located on the sidelines of life
Simply because they are created only to find themselves living a hard life.

Abeer Aeriqi shares a story how it feels betrayed by your sibling. She also posts an interesting story which has the morale that “we always suffer from severe emotional stupidity, which makes us judge things wrong.”

Eman shares the thoughts of an unsuccessful love and whether people should try over and over before giving up hope on love.

The list of participants’ blogs of the EWAMT project can be found in this site.