Wednesday, July 09, 2008

BAWo Kenya Begins

Welcome to the Kenyan edition of the Blogs for African Women (BAWo) project. Almost exactly two years ago, the pilot of the BAWo project came to an end. It had been two months of teaching young Nigerian women how to blog, how to find their voices through writing, and how to harness this tool to share their perspectives with the world.

So, it is with great excitement that we are now embarking on the project with a new set of participants, but this time in Nairobi Kenya. In the last two years, there have been many advancements in the world of web 2.0 and in consideration of this, the 2-day training with the facilitators of BAWo - Kenya have also been learning how to incorporate the use of other social media, like social networking sites into the project.

I am Ore Somolu, one of the coordinators of the pilot. I manage the Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre (W.TEC), a non-governmental organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria, and I am here in Nairobi for a few days to work with the facilitators and project participants. I am sure that the other facilitators and, in due course, the project participants will start to introduce themselves.

Tomorrow we will begin working with the project participants and am really looking forward to that.