Member Spotlight: Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET)

This month, Sokari Ekine interviews Dorothy Okello, the founder and director of WOUGNET. WOUGNET (Kabissa profile, website hosted on Kabissa) has been a Kabissa member since 2001.

Sokari: Can you give members a brief overview of WOUGNET - when and why it started and what it does?

Dorothy: Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) is a non-governmental organization initiated in May 2000 by several women's organisations in Uganda to develop the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) among women as tools to share information and address issues collectively. WOUGNET's vision is a society in which women are empowered through the use of ICTs for sustainable development. Our mission is to promote and support the use of ICTs by women and women organisations in Uganda, so that they can take advantage of the opportunities presented by ICTs in order to effectively address national and local problems of Sustainable National Development. Presently, WOUGNET has over 90 women organisations as members, the majority are in urban areas and/or district towns where there is some Internet access and a few in rural areas.

WOUGNET activities are carried out under three major program areas:

• Information sharing and networking: This program aims at providing relevant information to urban and rural women and sharing of experiences for purposes of improving quality of lives.

• Technical support: This program aims at supporting women organisations to access, utilise and apply ICTs in addressing their development problems.

• Gender and ICT Policy Advocacy: The program aims at building capacity of network members to effectively influence the formulation and implementation of gender sensitive ICT policies and programs. WOUGNET serves as secretariat for the Uganda Women's Caucus on ICT (UWCI) to undertake advocacy activities geared towards addressing gender concerns within the ICT Policies and programs.

Sokari: You recently updated your website from being a very comprehensive but somewhat flat and passive site to one which is more interactive, more organised and less cumbersome. Can you tell me what led to the decision to change and what do you hope to achieve with the new site?

Dorothy: I would say that the new site was motivated by three needs:

1. To make the site more interactive in order to increase engagement by WOUGNET members as well as site visitors
2. To make the site more 'useable' as well as easier for one to learn about WOUGNET and our programs, and how to participate
3. To take advantage of new web technologies, including Web2.0, that make maintenance and administration of the website so much easier

Sokari: What new features do you have on the website?

Dorothy: Among the new features include:

• ability for members and visitors to register and contribute articles, blogs, etc., directly to the website
• rss feeds to bring in relevant information from other sites, e.g., we have a link on the Citizen Journalism page that brings in our contributions and others at the Citizen Journalism in Africa project in which we are also participating
• for the links and resources section we are now pulling in links compiled through Delicious that allows a more network-approach to compiling and sharing knowledge in the various categories of interest. At the moment, we have an agriculture group and a health group

Sokari: Do you plan on adding any other features such as broadcasting using podcasts and video casts?

Dorothy: Yes, we do and we are getting training and support on how to go about this through our participation in the Citizen Journalism in Africa (CJA) project. Just this week, WOUGNET is one of six organisations that have participated in a week long training on citizen journalism including digital photography, digital recordings, and broadcasting.

The CJA is a three-year initiative funded by both Hivos and the EU. Hivos is working with SANGONet (South Africa) on this project. The aim of the project is to increase civil society organisations' use of and interaction with various forms of media. This will help them maximise their communication strategies and reach. It is hoped that this will strengthen the organisations' use of media and increase quality information dissemination capacity using multiple platforms. The project is targeting six countries i.e. South Africa, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania.

Sokari: I note you have chosen to place your gallery on WOUGNET's server rather than use a service such as Flickr or Picassa. Why did you choose this method?

Dorothy: Actually our web development is pretty much of a learning-by-doing process, and as a result will continue to evolve as we develop one area after an another. The short-term solution was to place the gallery on our server, but we are investigating the use of services such as Flickr and Picassa and how we can take advantage of them. This will also involve training our members in the use of the new tools.

Sokari: Why did you choose the open source software Joomla to build the new site and have you had any problems with it?

Dorothy: We chose Joomla because at the time we began Kabissa was using Joomla too. We thought it best to use the same software. So far, we have not had problems - I should add that we have just launched the website this year, but so far so good.

Sokari: What advice would you give to other Kabissa members who were considering launching their own site?

Dorothy: I think the key issues:

• What is the purpose of the website and who are the intended users - this will help determine what type of website you should have including the best ways to manage our content
• Availability of local support to get you going with your website design project. With our new website, we were fortunate to have a volunteer with us for three months with the kind of skills needed to help us build up our website
• Compatibility of proposed software for the website and what is available or supported by Kabissa already

Sokari: Over the years how has WOUGNET changed in its use and approach to ICT tools for advocacy?

Dorothy: I think the main change is a shift from simply training/supporting members to use ICTs, but also using the tools to support our advocacy work on the need to ensure that our ICT policy environment is responsive to the different means, access and usage by men and women in Uganda. For example, the 'Gender and ICT Policy Advocacy' section of our websites has copies of key ICT policy documents as well as our own research and information materials on gender-related issues.

We are also more and more having the integration of the 'old' and the 'new' ICT tools. For example, we have run SMS campaigns which involve sending out sms messages on a daily basis to subscribers for the given campaign. Information on the campaigns is available at our website under the 'News section'. We have also blogged all the messages sent out during the SMS campaigns.

Sokari: Can you give some examples of the ways in which you have integrated internet technologies with other more traditional technologies such as radio and print media with new technologies such as the mobile phone?

Dorothy: I think I have mentioned this above, and perhaps after you have visited the website you can let me know if you would like more information on the SMS campaigns. For radio and print, for the moment, we have used the Internet as a resource to get information which is then repackaged into our weekly radio programs targeted at rural women farmers in Apac. With our new skills in citizen journalisms, we would hope to make some of the audio and video clips we record out in the field also available online.

Thank you very much to Dorothy and her colleagues for providing this insight into WOUGNET. If you would like your organisation to be featured, please contact the Community Coordinator.