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DigiActive trains in the Philippines

Last week  DigiActive members Mary Joyce and Lynn Casper took part in a 3-day training in Cebu City, Philippines called AOM 2.0: Intregrating Info-Activism in People’s Campaigns.  (AOM is an old Filipino activism slogan standing for arouse, organize, mobilize).  The training was put together by the Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU), a local Filipino tech empowerment NGO based in metro Manila.

DigiActive was only one of the partner organizations brought in by CPU to lead modules, which also included video empowerment group Kodao Productions and advocacy research group IBON.   It was an excellent event.  We met kind, funny, and talented activists and even got to see some tarsiers on neighboring island Bohol.  All and all a wonderful opportunity.

Participants work on a group activity during a DigiActive module on data visualization

More photos after the jump… Read more »

DigiActive training for women’s associations

Trainers Mary (standing) and Zineb (front seat on the right) with association members in Rabat.

On Tuesday, DigiActive conducted a training for Moroccan women’s rights associations.  The training, organized by the international human rights organization Global Rights, sought to give these associations new tools for their lobbying campaign in support of a domestic violence law in Morocco.   

The half-day training covered digital strategy for using blogs, video,  social networks, and mobile phones in campaining and was lead by DigiActive co-founder Mary Joyce and a local Moroccan trainer, Lalla Zineb El Alaoui, who led a presentation on how to use Facebook for activism.  

The training was giving using simultaneous English-Arabic translation, thus the head sets.  Mary presented in English, and Zineb in Arabic, with Powerpoint slides in French (Morocco’s second language). At DigiActive, we roll international.

DigiActive News: 1st training – Morocco

Participants during a personal security module (trainer Mary is on the far right)

Last weekend, DigiActive held its first digital activism training. The event was conducted over 3 days in Rabat, Morocco, and included modules on DigiActive’s top tools – Facebook, blogs, and mobile – as well as personal security and strategy.

The participants’ dinner at Dar Naji (thanks to management assistant Laila for organizing it)

DigiActive co-founder Mary conducted the training with the help of six of the participants: Said, Nada, Zineb, Abdessamad, Laila, and Chakib. The group became very close over the course of the training, and plans to keep in touch – via a Google Group, of course! Thanks to our official photographer, Chakib, photos from the training and participants’ dinner have been posted here on Flickr (and the two above).  The training was even filmed by 2M, Morocco’s official TV channel! (The news segment, in Arabic, is available on the 2M site and occurs about half-way through the show.)

Participants chatting before the training begins. (Photo:  Lalla Zineb el Alaoui)

All in all, it was a great event. Here are some comments from the participants:

• “I appreciated the training because of the amount of knowledge I learned, [the] interaction between participants, [the] quality of interventions.”
• “I appreciated the group work, the tutorials, and the method of running the training. It is a rich experience that I was able to share.” *
• “Thanks, Mary, it was very enriching and I am sure to share what I have learned… in order to lead our social actions is the right direction.” *
• “This training was a great opportunity to develop our digital skills and also to be aware how effectively the should be used.”
• “This training was very interactive and it pushed participants to create and produce, which is amazing!”

* = translated from French