Young Arab and Danish women

A group of young female bloggers from the MENA-region and from Denmark have found each other through a Danish cultural program, and are now about to create a broader network of female bloggers from the region and from Denmark.

By Mille Rode, general secretary of Danish PEN

The network will be used to build and develop new cultural expression, across borders and raise awareness of the new social media's role and opportunities. The project will also demonstrate how the new social media helps to increase understanding and awareness of women's conditions in the respective countries.
The network members are young female bloggers from Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Bahrain and Denmark. The network was initially established around 2-3 people from each country, but the group is not closed, and all who want to contribute to the network are welcome. By engaging in the network one is committed to contribute to the ongoing activities until the project period expires at the end of 2011.
Social media plays a prominent role in the development of civil society in many countries, not least the increasing prevalence of digital activism and web-based campaigns that is a challenge to the established structures of societies all over the world. The new media has created an opportunity for us within a very short time to deliver and to receive information that was previously difficult to get out, and we can gain insight to events and aspects of life that were not previously available. It has opened doors to a range of new opportunities for collaboration, and completely new cultural mix and expression.
The Blogger project holds all these possibilities; common projects and cultural cooperates, friendships across Country and culture borders, insight in each other’s life, network developing and exchanging experiences, browsing campaigns and digital activism and a lot more.
In June 2010 a group of young female bloggers met for the first time in Cairo. Over 3 days the participants discussed and define the project and got to know one another. Before they parted, the participants agreed on a number of tasks, and the results can now be seen on their blogs in the forms of text, photographs, drawings, etc.
The group will meet again in December 2010 in Amman, for a workshop of a more practical kind. The workshop will include the launch of a joint fictitious story (a novel), in which all the bloggers will contribute. They will prepare a web-based exhibition, with audio, photos and video, showing the diversity of the project. They will be designing a common website as a window and a platform for the project, and they will initiate a dialogue project called "Swopping Life" in which the participants in pairs will be living with one another for a while, "Walk a mile in each other's shoes." The thoughts and reflections of the participants will of course be available on their respective blogs all along.
From the 9^th to 11^th of March 2011 there will be held conference in Copenhagen on women and new media, focusing on the platform blogs can be, especially for women who traditionally are less heard in public. The conference will also focus on digital activism as a new tool by which the civic society can achieve responsiveness to given agendas that are rarely addressed while controlled by the traditional printed and electronic media.The conference is public and will be visited by a number of acknowledge activists and experts, who will impart their knowledge and experiences with the new social media.

The focal point of the conference will primarily be on the Arabic-speaking countries, but parallels and examples from Denmark and other Western countries will to a wide extend be included, as the conference contributors will be both from Arab countries and from Denmark.
The Female blogger project is initiated by Danish PEN, the Danish Center for Information on Gender, Equality and Ethnicity (KVINFO) and the Danish Center for Culture and Development (DCCD).

Additional information about the project can be obtained by contacting Mille Rode, Danish PEN, via email to [email protected]