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Workshop
Photo-Journal
 Monday,
May 7. The
day began with an introductory session in the morning at the International
Center, and participants in the workshop met one another formally
for the first time. Already it is clear that as professionals and
women's advocates the participants have much to share with each
other. Welcomes came from the MSU departments and partners of Matrix,
Women in International Development (WID) and the African Studies
Center. After lunch the first technology workshop began! Although
the participants have an extremely varied background with computers,
each was successful in setting up an individual email account and
joining our first listserv discussion. The group also developed
skills for researching the internet and critically evaluating sites
for both form and content.
Click for more pictures!
 Tuesday,
May 8. The morning workshop was focused on learning hypertext
markup language (HTML) code and FTP (file transfer protocol). Each
participant successfully made her first webpage, and did it the
"hard" way--by writing the HTML code long hand. Tomorrow
we switch to Dreamweaver, a web-editing program that writes the
code for you. After lunch at Owen Hall (the International Graduate
Student Center) Dr. Lisa Fine from the Department of History presented
a workshop on history and women's activism in the United States.
The women had the opportunity to discuss the history of women's
rights in their own countries, and also to elaborate upon their
own work in women's advocacy.
Click here for more pictures!
 Wednesday,
May 9. The IWDO participants were introduced to two new programs,
Dreamweaver, a web editor, and Fireworks, a program for making graphics
such as logos and editing images. Some time was spent conceptualizing
the overall design structure and objectives of the individual web
projects the women intend to complete. In the afternoon, Dr. Joyce
Ladenson, Director of Women's Studies at MSU, and Dr. Lisa Fine
facilitated a workshop on women's studies and recent American women's
activism.
Click here for more photos.
 Thursday,
May 10. More transferring of files using FTP, and much more
extensive work using Dreamweaver, with the participants learning
how to makes links to other pages, external sites, and also learning
how to integrate images such as photographs and logos into their
designs. After spending the morning learning how to scan and use
basic image-editing programs, the group spent the rest of the morning
brainstorming and designing Internet projects, specifically considering
issues of audience and access in their own countries. Who is the
site intended to reach, and how can a web site be used to facilitate
grassroots activism in rural communities? We considered how the
site can be useful in disseminating information to specific targets,
such as schools and other similar organizations that conduct outreach
to these communities. In the afternoon we visited the offices of
an NGO concerned with women's health in Lansing. The activists shared
conversations with the IWDO participants on the building women's
coalitions, encouraging women to run for political office, fundraising,
and targeting media messages for particular and strategic audiences.
Click here to see the photos we scanned.
Click here to see more photos of us in
the workshops.
 Friday,
May 11. This
morning everybody began to pull their sites together. By lunchtime
today each participant had completed a draft of her entire site,
and on Monday we'll continue to build on this great work. This afternoon
we attended a talk by Dr. Gretchen Barbatis from the Department
of Telecommunications. Gretchen has conducted extensive research
on indigenously-voiced media design, and worked directly with the
Nigerian based radio show "Ready or Not." Her experiences
were relevant to a number of our own concerns, and participants
were particularly interested in using focus groups and participatory
research in promoting grassroots involvement in their organizations.
No
lab this evening. Instead we took a trip to Jambalaya's--a wonderful
cajun restaurant with live blues music and plenty of room to dance!
We managed to get everyone to leave just after midnight!
Click
here for the whole Jambalaya's experience!
Monday,
May 14. We
didn't get the camera out until the evening lab session, but today
was extremely productive. Each participant now has a fully developed
website, and is really getting acquainted with the more advanced
features of the web and image editing programs. To the left we can
see Paula Rosinski showing Sheila Gyimah how to insert internal
links into her site for LAWA-Ghana (Leadership and Advocacy for
Women in Africa). On Monday afternoon the participants left their
projects for a while and visited Lansing's CADA (Council Against
Domestic Assault), a center for women and their children seeking
shelter from domestic abuse. As with the other sessions, the women
had opportunity to speak with members of the Lansing Community who
work to protect women's rights and provide centers to promote awareness
of women's issues such as violence, childcare, education and social
welfare.
 Tuesday,
May 15th. Here we see Stella Dorgu as she edits a scanned image.
Along with many other images, this graphic will be featured in the
Women Foundation Nigeria site, a collaborative venture created by
Stella, Christine Olujimi and Josephine Anenih. These collaborators,
all politicians in Nigeria, intend to create a site that facilitates
the participation of Nigerian Women in Political Life. In the afternoon
the participants went to the Allen Street Community Center to discussion
community-based women's health initiatives and to begin an on-line
discussion with new medical students.
Click
here to see more pictures from the Monday evening and Tuesday morning
lab sessions
Click here to see pictures from the Allen Street Center
 Wednesday,
May 16th. Today all the participants put finishing touches on
their sites and transferred them via FTP to the on-line server where
they can be seen on the internet around the world! In the afternoon
participants met with Dr. Lou Anna Simon, the Provost of Michigan
State University. Discussions included organization-wide visioning
and problemsolving as well as strategic mentorship for developing
women's leadership. The group discussed mentoring and networking,
navigation within an organization to maintain balance betwen principles
and pragmatism, and strategic ways to move agendas both publicly
and privately. In the evening, there was a graduation dinner. All
participants received certificates for their completed workshop.
Click here for photos of our meeting
with the MSU Provost.
Click
here to see pictures from the graduation dinner.
Thursday,
May 17th. This morning participants worked on polishing their
websites and presented them informally to eachother. The website
presentations were greeted with rousing cheers and applause. In
the afternoon everyone participated in a symposium titled "Women's
Rights as Human Rights." Participants presented on particular
legal, political, social and cultural issues facing women and human
rights in their countries.
Friday,
May 18th. Today the participants conducted evaluations of the
program and in the afternoon worked more on their sites. Several
participants started new sites. Saturday night everyone attended
a good-bye dinner at Mark Kornbluh's house.
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