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UPCOMING EVENTS

October 22, 2011

Project Meeting With Haitian Engineering Students

State University Of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

November 11, 2011

Presentation at Grace Hopper Celebration for Women and Computing

Open Source Needs You: Find Your Community and Change the World

November 12, 2011

Cross-Border Hackathon with Haitian Women Engineering Team

Open Source Day Grace Hopper Celebration for Women and Computing

Haitian Women’s Peer-to-Peer Network: Market Women Project

 

What we’re doing

We are designing and implementing a woman-friendly communications network for Haitian market women. The backbone of Haiti’s economy, these women travel between remote, unwired regions of Haiti and the capital to sell their goods, and deliver news and information.

Market women in Haiti only have minimal access to modern digital infrastructure, leaving them physically and financially vulnerable. The Haitian Women’s P2P Network: Market Women Project is integrating mobile phones with community radio and voice applications, empowering these women to create sustainable businesses, enhance safety and civic participation, and assist in Haiti’s long-term development.

 

Why we’re unique

• Created for and by local women-in-tech who will tap into a larger global movement through outside mentoring, collaboration, and partnership
• Designed in full partnership with the women who will use it, ensuring usability and a sense of ownership and empowerment
• Using women-friendly technology to address literacy, access, and privacy concern issues – we integrate voice applications with ubiquitous technology, such as community radio and brick mobile phones
• Sustainable, inexpensive, and immediate solutions to support women in local, grassroots efforts to rebuild Haiti, and to encourage business and civic participation
• Connecting women off the grid who are excluded today, by further empowering their role as communication hubs, backbones of the local economy, and violence prevention / early warning systems
• Engaging illiterate women in the larger digital community through a unique, inclusive, multimedia blog that incorporates voice technology and other women-friendly applications

 

Our collaborators

• Haitian Market Women’s Association
• Women’s community radio network in Haiti
• Haitian women ICT students and engineering licensing candidates at the State University of Haiti
• Leaders in Haitian microfinance
• Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology
• Global network of advisors in low-capacity and voice-based technology