Take Back the Tech

Take Back the Tech is a campaign that started November 25 and ends December 10, which also happens to be Jane Addams Day. This is an effort to ask how to use information technologies to help prevent violence against women. But they also challenge ways that abusers use information technology–to track a woman, to harass someone online, and to post porn. The group behind this campaign, the Association of Progressive Communications, Women’s Networking Support Programme (APC WNSP), “is a global network of more than 175 women in over 55 countries promoting gender equality in the design, implementation, access and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and in the policy decisions and frameworks that regulate them.” There are interactive options on the site–like making a postcard or uploading a digital story–that invite people to share their own experiences. Betty’s story, the brief video available for viewing, is about her torture and abuse in Uganda as a teenager and the healing that she found afterwards.