The Connect-for-Change programme has as one it its ambitions to contribute to an improved collective understanding of how the introduction, uptake, and embedding of ICT-based tools and solutions in health, education and economic development activities impact the relationships between men and women, as well as shift gender dynamics in a particular society. 
On Feb 3rd & 4th 2014, 50+ C4C stakeholders are convening at the AmLab, home to two of the Connect-for-Change alliance members, to share their experiences and insights generated from their work in coordinating, facilitating and supporting C4C programmes in the field.
5 C4C partners are joining the 2-day conversation to provide detail on what is working well in ensuring that their ICT-led Social Innovation programmes generate equal opportunities for both men and women to benefit, and inform C4C stakeholders on which issues are most important to tackle for the remainder of the programme period.
- Steven Agbenyo, from Savanah Signatures in Ghana, will shed light on his experiences in designing and running ICT-for-Education programmes in Northern Ghana (use of ICT tools to enhance school administration and teaching & learning in Northern Ghana).
- Fredah Jelagat, from ELRECO – ADS in Kenya, will be sharing her experiences as ICT officer in an ICT for Economic Development programme, wherein she has set up ICT centres for farmers, facilitates participatory agricultural video productions with farmers, enabled them to use market price information solutions, and much more.
- Betty Walakira, from Health Child in Uganda, has been using diverse ICT tools and ICT-enabled approaches to enhance maternal and child health. Health Child’s research on their programmes have generated concrete insights into what works, where and why.
- Dorcus Atieno, from the Jinja Diocese Health Office in Uganda, has coordinated a very interesting pilot in which patient satisfaction data was collected using smartphones and akvoflow to see how such technology can be used to generate benefits for the Diocese Health Office and the patients.
- Julian Sarria Del Pielago, from PROMUC in Peru, is the project manager for the ICT-for-microfinance programme which uses ICT to support micro-entrepreneurs and small-scale producers in rural areas of Peru.
Today’s programme is bringing out a lot of local experiences and different approaches to using ICTs to address gender in development.
Starting with Stephen’s, Betty’s and Fredah’s kick off presentations on what they do, what their assumptions have been, whether they were valid, what new insights they acquired, what changes they made during implementation of their programmes, and more, the participants in today’s sessions grouped around the theme/sector of their interest to dig deeper into the C4C local partners’ experiences and to share their own. These discussions surfaced some initial questions to challenge ourselves, e.g. should ‘Gender’ be the label around which we organise our thinking and strategising, or should it rather be ‘Inequalities’?
The thinking from the groups was brought back to centre in a fishbowl, in which the C4C local partners were joined by Prof. Mirjam de Bruin and DGIS representative Nina van Landschot. Updates to follow!
