Month: February 2024

DWAZ uses our resources to deliver online training on safe, wise and secure use of digital tech to 1911 of their members in Southern Africa

We are delighted to hear that the training resources on safe, wise and secure use of digital tech by migrants, originally developed in Nepal (as part of the MIDEQ Hub, funded by UKRI GCRF) and reversioned specifically for women in Southern Africa have recently been used by our good friends at the Domestic Workers Association Zimbabwe (DWAZ) to deliver training to 1911 of their members in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. DWAZ was set up by Mendy Lusaba in 2021 (see this interview about her in Lionesses of Africa), and it has a centre in Zimbabwe that offers training in housekeeping, cooking and baking, gardening and care work. They also have a domestic worker netball team for the mental health of domestic workers. 

In January this year, we met up with Mendy in Johannesburg, where she joined the launch of our work in South Africa that had trained migrants in video making amd the safe use of digital tech, and she made the astute observation that little digital literacy training available in the region includes sessions on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech (watch this short video where she speaks about this). Working with her and others in South Africa, we therefore reversioned our resources specifically so that they focused on the needs of women and girl migrants there, and it is great to see them being used in this way. The resources include a slide deck and guidance notes on how they can be used and adapted by trainers, and is available freely under a CC BY-SA licence. We are continuing to develop this and we are currently working in Brazil to produce a Portuguese language version that can also be adapted for countries such as Mozambique and Angola.

Everyone is vulnerable to the many harms enabled through the use of digital tech, and it is very important that these are mitigated so that people can indeed benefit from them. Women and girls in Southern Africa are particularly vulnerable to online sexual harassment, scams, bullying, being tracked, exploitation, fake news and identity theft. The training deck is designed for people with little previous knowledge about using digital tech, and includes specific guidance on how to avoid these harms. It was developed together with migrants and migrant oprganisations, and combines this practical approach with existing good practices recommended in the relevant literature. It is divided into four main sections: an introduction covering digital literacy basics, the safe use of digital tech, how to use these technologies wisely, and how to use them privately and securely, and it also includes a short list of recommendations for further reading.

Example of final slide from the training resources

Should you use these resources, please let us know and share suggestions for how they could be improved, and don’t forget to satisfy the requirements of the CC BY-SA licence so that iothers can also benefit from your work.

Our work on safe, wise and secure use of digital tech in Nepal now reaching thousands of people

We are delighted to see our recent partnership agreement with ACORAB and CIN in Nepal already bearing fruit. This was designed in part to share information about the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech, especially in remote areas of the country, as well as providing migrants with information about the new portal https://pardesi.org.np that we helped to craft with a range of migrant organisations and tech developers as part of our contribution to the MDEQ Hub.

Sajha Nepal Episode 1: Featuring Kabiraj Upreti from the Department of Labour and Occupational Safety, Government of Nepal and Aayush Pradhananga from AuraEd.

ACORAB, the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, Nepal, and CIN, their Community Information Network, have collaboratively developed radio programmes based on some of the resources we have developed with our partners in Nepal. Two recent broadcasts show the considerable importance of community radio as a means for sharing information:

  • A Public Service Announcement developed earlier in 2024 which included a short section about safe migration had received 4,900 views on Facebook by 6th February, and its final broadcast was on 12th February. By today (14th February) it had received 5,600 views and 452 likes.
  • ACORAB also extended an invitation to several individuals that we had recommended to participate in a radio programme on secure use of information technology for safe migration, and Kabiraj Upreti from the Department of Labour and Occupational Safety and Aayush Pradhananga from AuraEd were able to participate in a recording session on 5th February. Subsequently this was aired on 7th February immediately following the Sajha Khabar news bulletin at 7 am, as part of their regular program “Sajha Nepal”, and it has also already reached over 1,000 views on Facebook, with 45 likes.

There are more than 300 community radio stations in ACORAB’s network, and these reach over 6.7 million people throughout Nepal, many of whom will have also heard these broadcaste. We are incredibly grateful to everyone at ACORAB and CIN, especially their programme manager Ayeesha Joshi, for helping to make this happen, and look forward to hearing in due course from some of those who have listened to the broadcasts about how they have changed their digital behaviours as a result.

We very much look forward to continuing our work with ACORAB and CIN, and to help them develop their broadcasting capacity, drawing on good practices globally, and optimising the use ot digital technologies.