Activists around the world use information and communications technologies (ICTs) to speak out and stand up against injustice, to take action against violence and inequality, and build movements for transformative change. But the big questions for many activists remain: How do we tell our own stories and make ourselves heard? How do we tell stories that empower and inspire, and challenge mainstream stories that tend to silence, erase women’s lives, experiences and voices? How do we communicate with each other and with people beyond our movements? What is the best way to develop messages that reach out to people and make our movements bigger? What tools make the most sense for our context and capacity? How can we communicate safely and securely in a world that has become increasingly risky for activists and women’s rights activists online and offline?
We hope ICTs for Feminist Movement Building: Activist Toolkit will help YOU:
- Experiment and be creative about communicating
- Think about how communications can help to build movements for social justice
- Fight gender stereotypes and Amplify women’s voices so they can tell their own stories
- Design strategies that make sense for their organisations and movements
- Be safe, be smart and be secure!
DOWNLOAD the toolkit IN FULL or INDIVIDUAL CHAPTERS at the bottom of the page.
In this toolkit, we draw on the experience and contexts of women activists in southern Africa and beyond. And while we focus on women’s rights activists, anyone who is part of a movement for social change will find it useful.
The toolkit aims to assist activists to think through their communication strategies in a way that supports movement building. It offers an exciting and practical guide to writing a communication strategy and reviews a number of tools (ICTs) and technology-related campaigns which can be used in organising work. At the core, this toolkit is also about feminist practice and how to use tools to communicate in ways that are democratic, amplify women’s voices whilst challenging stereotypes and discriminatory social norms. We hope it will assist activists in making creative, safe and sustainable choices in using ICTs in our communication strategies.
Just Associates (JASS), in partnership with Women’sNet and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), is proud to present the ICTs for Feminist Movement Building: Activist Toolkit. ICTs for Feminist Movement Building is designed to support more effective, resilient, visible and safe movements by helping activists to understand ICTs, influence how they are developed, empower ourselves to use them and harness them to make a difference.
This toolkit highlights the extraordinary potential of ICTs to help us bring about social justice, equality between women and men, as well as for all oppressed groups. While much of our activism and organising happens in-person and “offline”, linking tools of the online world creates powerful ways to make our campaigns visible in new and wider spaces.
Special thanks to Warda of WE Designs and Donovan Ward for their creative design and artwork on the ICT Toolkit.
