Take Back the Tech! is a collaborative campaign to reclaim information and communication technologies to end violence against women.

From their website: “The campaign calls on all ICT users – especially women and girls – to take control of technology and strategically use any ICT platform at hand (mobile phones, instant messengers, blogs, websites, digital cameras, email, podcasts and more) for activism against gender-based violence”.

Most important, this campaign wants to raise awareness about cyberstalking, ang give the women an important tool to defende themselves from this new form of violence

I didn’t know anything about the people we were going to meet, and my head was full of commonplaces. I would have never thought that the young girls immediately asked for a Facebook account  …

Let’s start form the beginning … that morning, we met just a woman. The class was scheduled for the afternoon, but all the village knew we were there. The lady wanted to learn writing her name, using a pen, not a computer.

Finally, in the afternoon we met our first group of ‘students’, mainly composed by women. And two men. At the beginning there were few words, many smiles, and a sort of suspicion. It was difficult to understand their expectations, it was difficult to realize ours. For most of them was their first ‘digital’ experience, and even the keyboard was largely unknown …

Our first class flew by, in a mix of multiple languages … Italian, French, Serer, English for some technical words …

But the real surprise was on Tuesday morning: when we arrived we found a group of young girls waiting for us. Same as all teen agers, they wanted a computer class to create a Facebook account. In a while, I realized that we are so full of commonplace, that we can’t face reality. Yes, we were in a small dusty village, but connections make information very fast, and Africa is running fast.

So  that, at the end of our second day, we had two fabulous different groups of students

Lampedusa is the southernmost part of Italy, geologically belonging to Africa as it is located   just 110 km from its coast (220 from Italy). In 2003  a natural reserve was established in Lampedusa, to protect its coasts and sea.

Unfortunately, in the last years Lampedusa has become famous because of the arrival of thousands of migrants mainly from north Africa. I wrote  ‘unfortunately’ because very often the arrival of migrants went with tragedy,  shipwrecks, loneliness, people who left their country looking for a better life, dignity, job.

On the contrary, Lampedusa represents a bridge between different culture, between Africa and Europe. That’s why a local association Askavusa, wanted to create a museum, called Museum of Migrations, collecting all the objects found on the watercrafts and left behind.

Memory, witness, anti-racism: these are the key words that better represent the aim of this musem.

An important experience which involves citizens and migrants, artists an students, but people first of all …

Museum of Migrations http://www.museodellemigrazioni.com

Djilor – ‘skyline’

Djilor is a small village located in Senegal, in Fatick region, 200 km away from Dakar, near the delta of Sine Saloum.
Even if we can consider 200 km as a short distance from Dakar, there is a huge gap in terms of health and daily life: here malaria is endemic the whole year and a simple diarrhea can cause a serious disease. The only hospital is in poor conditions.
In spite of these problems, telcom technology is widespread: smartphones are very common and mobiles work everywhere. If you talk to teenagers about internet, they immediately ask for a Facebook account. The only internet point is in Fimela, at a walking distance of half an hour, and wifi connection is available only in couple of touristic and expansive lodges.
Fortunately, in one of these lodges, we were able to manage our ‘digital classroom’ with some secondhand laptop donated by an European company.
After a short visit to a local festival, we spent our first day installing software, cleaning virus, resetting keyboards, translating in French, dusting down computers, testing connections … On Sunday night, everything was ready for our first class in Senegal.

… to be continued …

Djilor – main square

http://www.festivaldjyem.com/

Setting up computers

One In Three Women On The Planet Will Be Raped Or Beaten In Her Lifetime.
One Billion Women Violated Is An Atrocity.
One Billion Women Dancing Is A Revolution.

But my next trip will be a very special one for me. For the first time I’ll go there for a serious project. Thanks to Italian no-profit organizations Informatici Senza Frontiere (it sounds like IT without borders) and Yungar per la pace (Yungar for peace) me and two other friends will teach basic computer in Senegal.

That’s why I feel like my first time in Africa. I deeply believe that facilitating access to computing, helping to fight digital divide represents a step towards democracy, and social inclusion.

I hope to tell you soon about this story here, or if you’d like to practice your Italian also here.

Stay tuned!

Moreover, here you’ll find a trailer telling about another Italian holocaust, happened in 1943 near Lago Maggiore

Extermination camp – photo by Emilio D’Itri – all rights reserved

On January 27, 1945, the Soviet Army entered Auschwitz and liberated more than 7.000 (seven thousand!) prisoners, deported in this death camp between 1940 and 1945.

For the first time the whole world realized what really happened, as Auschiwtz showed its horrors, beyond imagination. Auschwittz was a NETWORK of extermination camps.

In 2000 the Italian Parliament designated January 27 as ‘Memory Day’ an annual commemoration to remind all the people what happened in a recent past, and teach new generation about war’s horrors (for people that may concerned … the Italian law n. 211 dated July 20^th, 2000).

In 2005, also United Nations adopted a resolution designating this day as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the important aim to develop educational programs to help prevention against acts of genocide.

It’s important to remember that the aim is not only to commemorate the victims (that is important too!), but to create and enforce a mass awareness about this tragedy, without forgetting the human’s responsibility.

Memory and awareness are the main way we have to not allow future acts of genocide.

I got this information when I visited Buenos Aires in August, from a ‘porteño I met there.

I love bookshops, and it is one of the places I never miss when I am abroad. But when I got inside El Ateneo I couldn’t believe my own eyes … What do you think?

When I visited Myanmar in 2002, I spent a lot of time wondering if it was right to go there.

All the money spent in that country would have surely supported – in some way – the terrible military dictatorship.

Finally, I decided to go and see … During my trip I met a nineteen years old guide. When we were on the bus with the driver or other people he was used to mechanically speak, with a sort of  ‘flat’ sound. He didn’t reply to any difficult question about his country.

But during a trekking, far from any other people, he started to talk about his life, his family, his difficult life in Myanmar. There I realized that he was able to speak Italian better than English, that was also the reason why he looked at my Italian book about Myanmar. At the end of the trip, I wanted to give him the book but before I had to inform him about contents, as it strongly criticized Myanmar government.

A simply travel guide could represent a danger for him, for his freedom. However, as I supposed, he was very happy about the present, he took the book but fastly hid it.

Today, reading about Aung San Suu Kyi election, all my thoughts are for that young guy and ‘the beginning of a new era’ for Myanmar people.

Here and here two previous posts about Sung San Suu Kyi

And here, the song that Bono with U2 dedicated to her