EWAMT: Candle In The Dark – The Women Bloggers Of Yemen

Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian of Yemeni Arab descent, has caused much media attention because of his attempted bomb attack on a flight to USA. Another shocking revelation was Abdulmutallab's conviction that he was trained by AL-Qaeda in Yemen and there are many others in Yemen planning to bring down American jets.

The mainstream media is filled with all these news along with stereotypes but they rarely portray what the common people of Yemen are thinking about. There are not many options to get those perspectives.

With the help of a Rising Voices microgrant, the project “Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques” is teaching blogging to female politicians, activists, and human right workers in Yemen to bring them in global conversation.

Women activists in Yemen - 8th Workshop. November 2009

Women activists in Yemen – 8th Workshop. November 2009

Here we look at some of the participant's recent posts:

Aisha at Life Blog wishes these in a poem:

I reiterate once again to say that we must be very fair with our children ..
And they get all their rights ..
Because what awaits them after a few years .. will be painful at best ..

Drew drops writes about mistreatment of children and urges the readers in her post.

Kholoud at Ambitious Project talks about East-West relationship. The blogger ponders on the efforts of some Western countries to ban nuclear proliferation in the Middle east whereas those countries do not start banning their own to stay in the balance.

Abeer Aeriqi writes about her study and life and rediscovers her through work.

Here is a list of more blogs to follow.

On Thursday 12th of November 2009 the eighth workshop took place with 12 trainees. The project leader Ghaida'a Al Absi informs:

At the end of the workshop, we discussed some topics such as freedom of speech, sexual harassment in Yemen. Talking about freedom of speech in Yemen leads you to sensitive position with the government, so we were talking about it with fear of the existence of spies.

ewamt 8th workshop

Yemeni activists discussing

Ghaida'a says: “EWAMT project is like a candle with other candles, which are lighting up the darkness in Yemen.” We hope that with more blogs and more active conversations the darkness will disappear sooner rather than later.

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