Participants
INFO-ACTIVISM CAMP PARTICIPANTS LIST
ARGENTINA
Catalina Soledad Farias is with Health care Without Harm Global South http://www.noharm.org/globalsoutheng and Friends of the Earth http://www.foei.org/en/who-we-are/friends-of-the-earth-international-mem... , Argentina. Earlier, she was with Greenpeace Argentina. Greenpeace Argentina, came out with the idea of GPTV, a weekly TV show that was developed as a multimedia campaigning tool that was broadcast in national cable and is still available in Youtube.
Marie Trigona (Advisory Group) has reported from Argentina for numerous media outlets around the world http://mujereslibres.blogspot.com/. A writer, radio producer, and film maker, her work focuses on labour struggles, social movements and human rights in Latin America. Her writing has appeared in publications including Z Magazine and ZNet, NACLA, Monthly Review, Canadian Dimension, The Buenos Aires Herald, Left Turn, Americas Program, Clamor, Venezuela Analysis, Upsidedown World, Dollars and Sense and many others.
AUSTRALIA
Andrew Lowenthal is director of programs with EngageMedia http://engagemedia.org/ in Australia -- a media, training, networking and technology organisation focused on social justice, human rights and environmental issues in the Asia-Pacific. Earlier, he was with Tactical Techology Collective as Participatory Media Project Lead and has worked for the past ten years as media activist chiefly working with Indymedia, Tactical Tech and EngageMedia.
BANGLADESH
Nurul Alam Masud is from Participatory Research & Action Network (PRAN) http://www.pran-bd.org/ of Bangladesh, where he's the chief executive. He has expertise in Participatory Video for Social Justice issue.
MM Mahbub Hasan is from Bangladesh's Coastal Development Partnership http://www.cdpbd.org/home.html. He has been involved in campaigns relating to pro-poor economic development and environmental conservation.
BELARUS
Toby is part of the Third Way, Internet Community. http://www.3dway.org which supports the formation of civil society. Technical coordinator, support training. Toby is a programmer and has used and taught how to use tools in personal security like GPG, Truecrypt.
BRAZIL
Pixel is a video activist who works with Estudio Livre http://estudiolivre.org, Media Sana http://mediasana.org and MetaReciclagem http://metareciclagem.org and helps the development of LiVES http://lives.sf.net. He works as a researcher at LIDEC (Digital Inclusion and Community Education Laboratory), also called WebLab http://weblab.futuro.usp.br, from The School of the Future of the University of São Paulo. He coordinates the Social Technology of Acessa SP, a digital inclusion program of the government of the state of São Paulo.
BURMA
Aung Myo Thein is from Burma (Myanmar) and part of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) http://www.aappb.org/ . Aung has worked on online campaigns inside and outside Burma and is an ardent campaigner for democracy and human rights issues.
Jockai Khaing is Director of Arakan Oil Watch and Editor of The Shwe Gas Bulletin, which offers news and analysis on Burma's oil and gas industry and its impacts on human rights and environment. He founded Arakan Oil Watch in 2006 to focus attenton on the negative impacts of oil and gas development in Arakan and Burma.
CAMBODIA
Leng Nay Heng is with the Cambodia Women's Network for Unity http://wnu.womynsagenda.org/ , which works to build capacity, Healthcare, Advocacy. Workers rights for sex workers and is actively involved in the campaign against the new anti-trafficking law in Cambodia.
COLOMBIA
Oswaldo Adolfo Rada is from Colombia and the Sendoros Mutual Association, which seeks to work on quality of life issues, and more. In earlier campaigns, they have used bookmarks, e-mails with images, internet banners with a 15-day countdown until the launch of the project, and such tools. http://www.proyectociat.blogspot.com/
EGYPT
Noha Atef Hefny is founder and editor of the Torture In Egypt http://tortureinegypt.net/ and has been actively involved in anti-torture campaigns in Egypt. She is keen to engage in valuable exchanges on web advocacy at the camp.
Samia Helmi El-Yamani 'Hayat' is project manager from the Egyptian New Woman Foundation which advocates women's rights. She has taken part in campaigns against sexual harassment of women and is a founder member in an initiative on the citizenship between Muslims and Christians.
Wael Abbas Belal is from Egypt, and with http://misrdigital.blogspirit.com/ . Earlier, he was the Middle East correspondent for the German news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA). His blog covers stuff that misses the traditional media, and provides SMS news on activism to over 1600 Twitter followers.
FRANCE
Elsa Caternet (Guest) is Project Director at Internews Europe. Internews Europe works to harness the power of media and information to help people hold their governments accountable, develop tolerant and prosperous communities, and to make sense of the driving forces affecting their lives. She is an ex-consultant for telecom and Internet Service Providers and spent a year in Afghanistan in 2004 for a media NGO. She is experienced in the development of fair trade products.
GEORGIA
Ana Keshlashvili is an assistant professor from the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs http://www.gipa.ge/ (GIPA), Caucasus School of Journalism. GIPA aims at building capacities for effective governance, media and civil society in Georgia. Citizen journalism is one of her major interests and areas of expertise, which she promises to share if there is an interest among participants.
GERMANY
Andrea Gotzke is from newthinking-communications.de in Germany, a communications agency for the digital society and digital culture. Their areas of work and interest are open source technologies and strategies, innovative and participatory uses of the Internet, and issues at the interface of ICTmedia and society-politics-culture.
Malte is a member of the managing board of DeepaMehta e.V. http://www.deepamehta.de/ , that encourages "research on the human-machine relationship and encouragement of education and apprenticeship."
Sandra Sudhoff is the Information Manager of CartONG http://www.cartong.org/ . Specially interested in developing web mapping for advocacy. Also spearheading an initiative called GeONG; the objective is to get French humanitarian organisations together and start collaboration, especially in the fields of GIS and mapping.
GHANA
Akofa Abla Anyidoho is from Ghana's Pathways of Women's Empowerment Research Project Consortium, West Africa Hub (WE RPC) http://www.pathwaysghana.blogspot.com/ , that is a research consortium funded by DFID and coordinated by the Institute of Development Studies, UK. Akofa is involved with WERPC's activities which includes networking concurrently with research so that their findings and observations can be considered in policy discussions.
HONG KONG
Chan 'Connie' Man Wai is with the Action for Reach Out (AFRO) www.afro.org.hk at Hong Kong, SAR China, as programme officer for public education and advocacy. Set up in 1993, AFRO offers services and support to women working in the sex industry, and see sex work as a legitimate occupation. She is currently also working as a volunteer at Women Coalition of HKSAR www.wchk.org
HUNGARY
Aliyah Rakhmetova is from Kazaksthan and works with the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU/TASZ) http://tasz.hu/en and works as the SWAN project coordinator. Sex Workers’ Rights Advocacy Network is a network of civil society organizations engaged in advocating the Human Rights of the sex workers in Central and Eastern Europe, CIS and South-East Europe.
Elizabeth C Eagen works in Hungary with the Human Rights and Governance Grants Programme of the Open Society Institute http://www.soros.org/ , where she is Programme Officer. She is currently working on a programme with her department to bring new tools and technologies to groups that collect data on human rights violations.
Janet Haven (Guest/Tactical Tech Board Member) is the Program Manager for the Civil Society Communications initiative at the Open Society Institute’s Information Program http://www.soros.org/. The Information Program works to enhance the ability to access, exchange and produce information by civil society constituencies. Before coming to OSI, Janet worked with software development teams at Sun Microsystems and Vivendi Universal. She has lived in Central Europe since 1995, and received a Master of Arts at the Unversity of Virginia with a focus on the use of internet technologies in the humanities.
INDIA
Aparna Ray from India is an author at Global Voices Online http://globalvoicesonline.org/ , which seeks to aggregate, curate and amplify global conversations online. She is a qualitative researcher and ethnographer based in Kolkata, with over 13 years experience in both commercial and social research across the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East.
Aung Kyaw Myo is with the Burma Information Technology Team (BIT) http://www.burmait.net/ based in New Delhi. Working to develop IT skills and capacity for young Burmese activists committed to the development of Burma.
Dina Mehta is a founder and Managing Director of Mosoci India http://mosoci.com/. With a background in sociology and anthropology she has almost twenty years specializing in qualitative research and ethnography. She is at the forefront of technology trend research in India and works with a global portfolio of companies; including learning journeys, and immersions for innovation teams. Dina brings her unique perspective to understanding the emerging social aspects of new technology and the impact of new media on youth and mobility.
Dharmesh Shah is from the Community Environmental Monitoring of India. http://www.bucketbrigade.net/article.php?list=type&type=45. He was earlier involved in academic research at the Queen Margaret University of Scotland. He is a volunteer for the survivors' movement for justice in Bhopal against the Union Carbide Corporation and its new owner, the Dow Chemical Corporation.
Frederick Noronha is an independed journalisr, avid photographer and FOSS advocate.
Himanshu Khatri is the co-founder of MediaShala http://www.mediashala.com/ which is geared towards a mix-media approach to solving problems to generate social and commercial worth. He worked in the IT industry on web platforms for a year before studying design at the National Institute of Design.
Htun Surte is with the Burma Centre in Delhi and is the coordinator for information and publication. He is interested in e-advocacy and networking and using advocacy as a campaign tool.
Lawrence Liang (Guest) is a researcher and writer at the Alternative Law Forum. He has been working on the politics of intellectual property for many years and is currently writing a book on law and justice in Hindi cinema.
Manohar Elavarthi is from Aneka/Karnataka Sexworkers' Union http://www.blogger.com/profile/10868366661389533397 , where he functions as co-director and advisor. Over the past two decades, he has been connected to various social movements -- of students, women, Dalits (the lowest in the caste hierarchy), indigenous people, workers, rural-urban poor, sexual minorities, sexworkers, people living with HIV, anti-communalism, anti-war, and anti-nuclear weapons.
Nalin Avasthiis a consultant at MediaShala and founder of Mayavi, a telecom applications start-up; having a background in electronics and telecommunications. He is keen on exploring mobile value added services and is interested in social media and web 2.0.
Namita Malhotra (Guest), a graduate of the National Law School, has a keen interest in pushing the relationship between law and media at Alternative Law Forum (ALF). She has been a part of a number of experiments which try to look at the critical and aesthetic possibilities between law and new media.
Namita Singh is from Video Volunteers http://www.videovolunteers.org/category/blog/ in India, a group which provides media accessibility and skills to the underpriviledged communities. They have set up a dozen 'community video units' in India, and have launched a Digital Media Learning Centre at Goa. See videos made by the communities at http://www.ch19.org
Phuntsok Dorjee is a Tibetan based in India, who works as ICT coordinator for the care and education of Tibetan refugee children. The Tibetan Technology Centre http://www.tibtec.org/ has drawn attention for its innovative project of using a wifi grid to spread the internet to places where commercial ISPs were unlikely to reach due to the low return on investment.
Sanjay Vijay Bhangar "sanjayb" is from CAMP (http://camputer.org), where he is tech/webmaster. He's part of http://pad.ma, a collaborative project on online video archive (Public Access Digital Media Archive), as a way of archiving raw footage from documentary film-makers.
Sreekanth Shamalah Rameshaiah 'Sree' is CEO of Mahiti http://mahiti.org/, a Bangalore-based group which works to reduce the cost and complexity of using IT through the strategic use of Free/Libre and Open Source Solutions (FOSS). Says Sree: "In geographic areas where we work, key bottlenecks have been: literacy, lack of localised applications (such as local language interface to access mobile phone)."
Srideviikarumari Padmanaban is from the Centre for Women's Development and Research in India http://www.cwdr.org.in. She graduated in visual communication and is has been involved with campaigns on the empowerment of women. See the website for adolescent girls at www.snehidhi.org
Sumiran Pandiya is the co-founder of MediaShala and has worked on web platform for about two years. He studied Interface Design at the National Institute of Design and was later endorsed by Ford Foundation for researching issues on obesity caused by sedentary lifestyles in urban children.
Sunil Abraham is Director of Policy at the newly established Centre for Internet and Society http://www.cis-india.org/, Bangalore. CIS aims to critically engage with concerns of digital plurality, public accountability and pedagogic practices in the field of Internet and Society, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogues and exchange.
Vidya Reddy is from Tulir http://www.tulir.org/ -- Centre for the Prevention and Healing of Child Sexual Abuse in India, where she's Executive Director. Vidya has been actively involved in campaigns and raising awareness of child sexual abuse and is hoping to gain skills and knowledge to plan and strategise the use of ICTs and digital technology in Tulir's advocacy efforts.
INDONESIA
Heidi Leanne Arbuckle is an Australian with the Ford Foundation in Indonesia http://www.fordfound.org/regions/indonesia/overview. She is involved in developing strategic uses of technology and enhancing skills among Indonesian activists, advocates and media organisations, and to support their international engagement. Communication strategies, navigation of online space and the use of digital technologies are key interest areas.
Taibah Istiqamah is a member and former general secretary of Green Student Movement Walhi Kalimantan Selatan http://www.walhikalsel.org/.Taibah seeks to learn how to ensure more public participation as well as effeciently use resources in campaigns for environmental justice.
KENYA
John Kipchumbah "Kipp". A Kenyan citizen and an information systems professional currently working as a Program Associate for the Research, Information and Knowledge Management Program, and a Co founder of INFONET program; His eight year experience in the non profit sector has been centrally focused on analysing and developing technologies that empowers communities in the area of participation in governance. His initial formative years in the sector saw my engagement on training and managing human rights monitoring systems, - Martus and Tracking systems using open technologies to bridge reporting and creating a learning community of human rights defenders in Africa and the region.
Odini Harrison Lenard is from the Kenya AIDS NGOs Consortium (KANCO) http://www.kanco.org/FW266/html/Index.html and has been involved in Universal Access to HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support seeking to influence decision makers, media, individuals, NGOs, the private sector and the government to embrace world AIDS Day.
Josephine Wanjiru Macharia is Kenyan and with Source-Net Women's Empowerment Programme http://www.sowep.org/. She is Programme Coordinator. She has over eight years of mobilising and organising community groups, specially marginalised ones like sex workers, orphan street children, and victims of HIV/AIDS. In 2000, she facilitated the formation of the first teenage sex-workers' theatre group, 'Sisters-in-One'.
Yves Niyiragira is a Burundian in Kenya, and assistant editor of Fahamu networks for social justice http://www.fahamu.org/. Fahamu runs two major electronic newsletters -- Pambazuka ('the dawn') News, and the African Union Monitor. Yves is presently involved in a community radio project to promote women's rights in Africa. He is keen to learn about other existing technologies that can reach a wide audience at the grassroots level.
LEBANON
Dana Abourahme is from the Lebanon-based Cinemayat http://www.cinemayat.org/ -- Cinema for Life and the US-Palestine Youth Solidarity Network. Dana is a media educator and has been extensively involved in video activism and has used her expertise in this medium to train youth and teens.
Jessica Dheere works in Lebanon for the Social Media Exchange http://www.socialmediaexchange.org/. She is a member of the founding team, director, trainer. She is a journalist and a trainer, well-versed in social media concepts and audio editing.
Muzna Al-Masri is from Lebanon, and a founding-member of Cinemayat -- Cinema for Life (www.cinemayat.org). She is also a PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College's Department of Anthropology. Her PhD research is on the social construction of conflict boundaries within the city of Beirut.
Rebecca Saab Saade "Pazuzu" is Lebanese and part of IndyACT (www.indyact.org) league of activists and a volunteer at kafa.org.lb. She was involved in media activism during the 2006 war in Lebanon linking up a team of architects, graphic designers, researchers and human rights and media activists.
MOROCCO
Amine, of Morocco, co-founder of DigiActive.org http://www.digiactive.org/ and has created online projects which seek to increase transparency and access to information in Morocco. Amine believes that digital activists around the world are building, at an individual level, a corpus of knowledge and expertise and the info-activism camp is the perfect opportunity for cross-fermentation and collaboration.
NAMIBIA
Esther Kictoria Sheehama is from Namibia's Positive Vibes http://www.aidsnet.dk/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2FFiles%2FFile..., and an HIV trainer and activist and is keen to explore the medium for future campaigns on AIDS and HIV. She's a good photographer.
NIGERIA
Oluwatoyin Ajao-Dawodu is interested in and works towards gender equality and equity through girls/women development in all areas of their daily lives. A passionate feminist and gender activist, Oluwatoyin has a life long connection with development work which she has since focused on for more than five years. She is a blogger (http://genderandme.blogspot.com/) and is delighted to use her blog to promote feminism, gender issues and women’s human rights. She works with Women’s Technology Empowerment Centre as a project coordinator and is a volunteer of a women’s human rights organisation called Baobab for Women’s Human Rights.
Christiana Uyoyou Charles-Iyoha is executive director at Nigeria's Centre for Policy and Development (PolDeC) http://www.poldec.org/. She has carried out a study on the Nigerian use of mobile phones.
PHILIPPINES
Anjali Lowe is Canadian, based in the Philippines, and with the Migrant Forum in Asia http://www.mfasia.org/ (MFA). She was earlier with the Canadian Alliance of Student Association (CASA) as a policy and research officer. Anjali has been actively involved with advocacy and campaigns and is presently involved in advocacy to regional and international bodies and governments.
Cheekay (Tactical Tech Board Member) has been working for APC (Association for Progressive Communication) since 2002. She is involved with the APC Women's Networking Programme and the Strategic Use and Capacity Program. She is currently Co-Coordinator of the Asia Pacific network of the APC WNSP. She is also the Project Manager for a project initiated by WomensHub in the Philippines called, SheBlogs -- an Open Source journaling and web publishing tool targeted towards encouraging Filipino women to publish content on the Internet.
Jola Diones Mamangun is executive director at KODAO Productions http://www.kodao.org/ in the Philipines, which aims to use the medium of video and radio in disseminating people's issues in respect to human rights. She is currently working on producing a video advocacy project about displacement caused by "development" in the Philippines.
Mei is from the Amnesty International's Philippines http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/philippines Section, where she is programme coordinator for media, communications and publications. Mei is a human rights education trainer, a media worker, graphic artist and skilled in video advocacy.
Rick Bahague (Advisory Group) is the Projects Coordinator of the Computer Professionals' Union (CP-Union.Org) in the Philippines. CP-Union has been working to advance information and communications technology to benefit grassroots organisations in the country. He leads the K-Rights Monitoring Project of CP-Union which is the primary tool for human rights documentation in the Philippines.
POLAND
Michal Grzegorz Mach is from Poland and the CiviCRM/Social Source Foundation http://civicrm.org/, which works to create Free/Libre and Open Source (FOSS) solutions for the civic sector. He is the co-founder and Polish team leader. He has also been the NGO-in-a-box product manager for Tactical Tech.
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Aleksandra Valerievna Gurinova is from the Russian Harm Reduction Network http://eng.harmreduction.ru/, that promotes a drug-related harm reduction strategy to combat the HIV epidemic and other adverse consequences related to drugs, and strengthen public health and the civil rights of drug users. She is the advocacy coordinator.
SOUTH AFRICA
Alaa Abd El Fatah (Advisory Group). From his work with children on using facebook to ridicule their teachers in the arab digital expression camps (http://www.arabdigitalexpression.com), to his work with pro democracy activists on using blogs to mobilize thousands of Egyptians against their government in the Kefaya movement (http://www.harakamasria.org), Alaa just loves helping people use ICTs to stick it to the man.
Botswang Kgeledi from South Africa is with SANGONET http://www.sangonet.org.za/portal/, which seeks to influence social transformation through ICTs. He is an IT programme officer. He is looking to experience and experiment with new technologies which SANGONeT could locally implement in their projects to improve their work as an ICT NGO organisation in Southern Africa.
Joy Olivier is executive director of South Africa's IkamvaYouth http://www.ikamvayouth.org & Equal Education. She designed Operation Fikelela, a computer literacy curriculum for first-time computer users.
Manal Bahey Eidin Hassan is from Egypt, and based in South Africa. She's a freelance techie, self-employed web developer and technology trainer. She has worked on the Katib.org project, an Arabic blogging platform for human rights activists.
Mark Thabo Weinberg is from South Africa and with Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) http://aidc.org.za/. It works to build a mass-based movement for social justice, by enhancing the institutional capacity of the people's media organisations and the communication capacity of progressive civil society organisations.
Sally-Jean Shackelton (Advisory Group) is Women’sNet’s http://www.womensnet.org.za/ Executive Director. Her work in the gender sector started in 1991 with her involvement in an organisation focusing on gender based violence, where she was the Information and Media Manager. Since this time she has worked as a consultant, trainer and materials developer – training court personnel on violence against women, coordinating a manual women women’s rights, and participating in research.
SOUTH KOREA
Dongwon Jo is from South Korea's Media Culture Action http://gomediaction.net/drupal/. This organisation is opposed to neoliberation globalisation social movements. He has earlier been with MEDIACT, a public media centre offering film and video support (equipment and facilities), media education, public access and media research and advocacy.
TAJIKISTAN
Saifullo Hikmatov is from the Public Fund Civil Internet Policy Initiative in Tajikistan. It aims to promote ICTs (information and communication technologies as an enabler of socio-economic development in Tajikistan). He has experience in the FOSS content management system, Joomla, among others.
THAILAND
Aie Son is Chairwoman of the Mon Youth Progressive Organisation in Thailand. Aie has worked with youth organisations since 2001 and has been involved in many campaigns on human rights. Aie has also conducted trainings on women rights, gender and sex education. Aie is keen to learn how to effectively use the web and mobiles in advocacy efforts.
Benjamas Boonyarit 'Por' is from Thailand's Public Dissemination for Social Awareness (PUDSA) Foundation. Benjamas is keen to learn how to tactically use information, communications and digital technologies to improve advocacy work even as she aims to help citizens' voices be heard through the use of new media. www.peoplepress.in.th www.deepsouthwatch.org http://petitpor.wordpress.com
Bree from Thailand is with the Thai Public Voice http://www.thaipublicvoice.org/main/subindex.php?page=news&category=11. It seeks to raise awareness and the importance of the law and human rights to the people living in a conflict area through the media and websites.
Dale (Chutchai Kongmont)(Advisory Group). Chutchai is the Community Arts worker for Asia Pacific Network of Sex Workers http://apnsw.org/. He conducts local educational and advocacy campaigns through media, art and technology. He has trained sex workers in using mobile phone cameras to interview and document other sex workers on human rights abuses, and is in the process of creating a pan-Asian network of sex worker activists who work in concert for common campaigns.
Wong Aung is a coordinator with the Shwe Gas Movement in Thailand and has worked to coordinate research initiatives both inside and outside Burma. Aung is a facilitator who is keen to learn and share about campaign activities and mobilising.
THE NETHERLANDS
Hapee De Groot is basically a techie who started at the Digital City in Amsterdam, a long time ago, working with Open Source Tools wherever possible and sharing
information about it. Within this field he focused on the web and specially web2.0. He is also the Webmaster of Hivos http://www.hivos.nl/english and part of the ICT&Media
team of Hivos working with Tactical Tech on these projects. Hivos regards ICT as an important instrument for development, as it helps partner organisations to work more efficiently and more effectively.
Patrice Riemens is a geographer and and former research fellow at the University of Amsterdam, and former fellow of the Waag Society in Amsterdam. He is currently advisor and on the board of Antenna Netherlands, a technology for development non-profit and ISP (http://www.antenna.nl).He is a promoter of Open Knowledge and Free Software, and has been involved as a "FLOSSopher" (a 'philosopher' of the Free/Libre and Open Source Software movements) at the Asia Source and Africa Source camps, held in 2005 and 2006 to promote FLOSS among non-governmental organisations.
Petra Timmermans is a sex worker activist (Canadian): "I have been living and working since 2002 in the Netherlands. In my role as the current coordinator of the International Committee on the Rights of Sex Workers in Europe (www.sexworkeurope.org) I am responsible for our website development and communications. The more I learn about technology the more passionate I become about the possibilities this can offer sex workers in combating the discrimination we face." Petra is also a member of the women and tech group GenderChangers (www.genderchangers.org).
Sami Ben Gharbia (Advisory Group) is a Tunisian digital activist and blogger now living in the Netherlands who serves as advocacy director of Global Voices (http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/). His personal blog is at فكرة (http://www.kitab.nl/) (which means "idea" in Arabic). Sami is the co-founder of nawaat (http://www.nawaat.org/), a Tunisian collective blog about news and politics, Cybversion (http://censorship.cybversion.org/) a collective blog of
documenting censorship in Tunisia.
UGANDA
Berna Twanza Ngolobe is the Advocacy Officer of Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) http://www.wougnet.org. WOUGNET is a non-governmental organisation initiated in May 2000 by several women's organisations in Uganda to develop the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) among women as tools to share information and address issues collectively.
Muyambi Ellady is general secretary to the Uganda Network on Toxic Free Malaria Control (UNETMAC). He has three years experience of participating in advocacy and campaigns. Most of his initiatives are related to environmental justice (biodiversity conservation, natural resources management, sustainable development etc) and human health issues.
UK
Darius Cuplinskas is director of the Open Society Institute's (OSI) Information Program. The programme aims to promote the equitable deployment of knowledge and communications resources for civic empowerment and effective democratic governance. He is co-initiator of the Open Access Initiative, Budapest, an international effort to make research articles in all academic fields freely available on the Internet.
Harpinder Collacott (Advisory Group) heads the Communications and Campaigns division of the Meningitis Research Foundation. Previously she worked with the Oak Foundation’s International Human Rights Programme, where she handled the transitional justice, human rights defenders and human rights campaigning portfolio. She has extensive experience in international justice and human rights, working with the Special Court for Sierra Leone as the Prosecutor’s Political Adviser and Special Assistant.
Marcin http://www.marcingajewski.com/ is Dutch/Polish and an independent artist and film-maker based in the UK/Netherlands. Says Marcin, a professional artist with a specific focus on the moving image, "I have been searching for a meaningful way in which I can utilise my creative talent in a sociocritical and engaged way."
Sokari edits and runs BlackLooks http://www.blacklooks.org/, an online media which publishes a weblog and uses other digital and social media, as a platform for journalistic activism: informing, promoting and campaigning for social justice for all people in Africa, beginning with lesbian and other women. In four-and-half years, she has written thousands of posts on her own blog and also on many others. One of the first African women to blog.
Tessa Lewin is British/South African and is with the Institute of Development Studies http://www.ids.ac.uk/, Research Pathways Consortium for Women's Empowerment. She works to set up a project with Action Aid and One World Action and the Fawcett Society, which looks at CEDAW as a charter for women. Tessa, who is an animator and has made a number of short films, is involved in women's rights advocacy and research work and is keen to gain technical skills to support her campaigns.
URUGUAY
Evan Robert Henshaw-Plath ("Rabble") is based in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he is with groups like protest.net, Indymedia http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml, etc and works to "build technology to facilitate radically egalitarian social transformation". An activist-geek, he's been senior web developer/architect for Yahoo! Fire Eagle (the geo-location platform with social, business and advertising implications).
Gaba is a media and tech activist from Uruguay, South America and has been involved with Indymedia for a long time and other organizing in Uruguay. http://gaba.protest.net
USA
A G Ravi (Advisory Group) directs the Technology department at the Center for Victims of Torture www.cvt.org, with the additional charge to expand the use of Information and Communication Technology by non governmental organisations within the worldwide torture rehabilitation movement. To help promote a more strategic use of information for civic society organizations in all sectors, he has helped create the New Tactics in Human Rights (www.newtactics.org) project's online participatory community for civic minded individuals and organizations, to help them learn, share and build solutions together.
Chris Michael, from WITNESS http://www.witness.org/ comes with years of experience designing, leading and coordinating innovative and high-profile local, national and international social and environmental justice campaigns for organizations such as Global Exchange and Rainforest Action Network. Much of Chris' work has been focused on creative and effective campaigns that utilize technology to promote justice.
David Taylor is the Founder and Director of Radical Designs http://radicaldesigns.org/, a software development company focused on meeting the technological needs of grassroots social movement organisations. He has spent the last nine years building cutting edge websites, online organizing tools and web based mobilization strategies for over 200 social movement organisations, nonprofits, and political campaigns. When not building websites, David is a direct action trainer, and mass mobilisation organiser, for the anti-globalization, anti-war, environmental and global justice movements as well as a political strategist for local progressive electoral campaigns in San Francisco.
Gunner is Executive Director of Aspiration, an NGO that works to see better software tools created to support NGOs working towards a better world. He has over twenty years of software development, senior management, and capacity building expertise and has spent the last fifteen years exploring how technology can most effectively empower and support social justice causes. Drawing on engineering, teaching and volunteer experiences, Gunner is a strategist and facilitator in both the non-profit and corporate sectors who is passionate about helping non-profits and NGOs make better use of technology. He currently sits on the boards of The Ruckus Society, Global Exchange, and Idealware, and is a firm believer in melding hard work with serious fun.
Hernan Bonomo is an Argentinian based in the United States, and is programme coordinator for the Open Society Institute http://www.soros.org/. He is an experienced graphic designer, evaluates OSI's initiatives and organisations seeking technical and financial assistance in Latin America.
Jacob R Appelbaum is with the Tor Project http://www.torproject.org/, a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. Developer, advocate and trainer. He has earlier worked with Aspiration, Greenpeace International/USA, Tactical Tech, RAN, The Ruckus, Society, monochrom, metalab, Noisebridge, Planetwork, the CCC, and others. Previously also involved with Summer Source in Croatia, NGO-in-a-Box, etc.
Kristin Joy Antin is with the Centre for Victims of Torture http://www.cvt.org/main.php which works to "heal the wounds of torture on individuals, their families and their communities and to stop torture worldwide". She is the New Tactics in Human Rights Online Community Builder.
Mary Joyce (Advisory Group) is the co-founder of DigiActive.org http://www.digiactive.org/, an all-volunteer organisation dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use digital tools to increase their impact. She was a master's student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a Research Assistant for the Internet and Democracy Project at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, also at Harvard. Mary also works as a consultant in the field of technology and social change.
Melissa Gira Grant http://www.melissagira.com/ is a writer, educator, and artist working in sex & technology. She is the co-founder of Boffery, an online tool for organizing and discussing one’s sex life with trusted personal contacts. She writes about sex & the internet at her award-winning blog, Sexerati. Her work has appeared in print in $pread, Make:, and in the anthologies Best Sex Writing 2008 (Cleis Press) and Dirty Girls (Seal Press).
Mikel Eruch Maron is from the Open Street Map Foundation http://foundation.openstreetmap.org/, US, where he is a board member. He believes in creating "a free and open map of the entire world". OpenStreetMap is made up primarily by volunteers surveying with cheap GPS units. Anyone can contribute, and anyone is welcome to use the map. He is on the OSM Foundation Board, and advocate OSM use for development and humanitarian needs.
Myahriban Halilovna Karyagdyyeva 'Mehri' is from Turkmenistan, based in the US, and with the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) http://www.irex.org/, Washington DC.
Sam Gregory Program Director at WITNESS http://www.witness.org/, he is a video producer, trainer, and human rights advocate. In 2005 he was the lead editor on Video for Change: A Guide for Advocacy and Activism (Pluto Press), and in 2007 he lead the development of the curriculum for WITNESS' first ever Video Advocacy Institute. Videos he has produced have been screened at the US Congress,the UK Houses of Parliament, the United Nations and at film festivals worldwide. He is on the Board of the US Campaign for Burma, and the Tactical Technology Collective.
ZIMBABWE
Brenda Burell (Tactical Tech Board Member is the co-founder and IT Director of Kubatana http://www.kubatana.net/, Zimbabwe's civic and human rights information portal. She has a background in social justice activism and helped establish Zimbabwe's national lesbian and gay organisation in 1989. Brenda has 9 years experience working in the pro-democracy movement in Zimbabwe focusing on information communication technologies. She is a keen cyclist and has banished any pretensions of respectability by being a consumer of pulp crime fiction.
Fungai Rufaro Machirori is from Zimbabwe, and with the Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS) http://www.safaids.net/ as an assistant media programme officer. She has been involved with various HIV/AIDS campaigns.
Natasha Valerie Msonza from Zimbabwe is information officer at the Kubatana Trust http://www.kubatana.net/, which aims to strengthen the use of email and internet strategies among Zimbabwean NGOs and CSOs. She is keen to learn more about mobilising constituencies and the use of strategic messaging and distributing information.
Pamela Dhlamini 'Parara' is from Zimbabwe, where she works with the Standard Newspaper http://www.thestandard.co.zw and Zimbabwe Independent http://www.thezimbabweindependent.com/. She is a senior designer and layout artist.
Robson Isaac Shoes 'Lambada' is from Contradictions Arts for Development Trust/ Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights http://www.kubatana.net/html/sectors/zim081.asp?sector=ARTCUL&details=Tel&orgcode=zim081. He has been involved in planned and unplanned demonstrations on academic freedom, voter education and trade union causes.
Rumbidzai Dube 'Dubby' is from IDASA/RAU of Zimbabwe http://www.idasa.org.za/, where she is a research assistant. Earlier, she has been with the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association(ZWLA). Their work also focuses on video advocacy.
