With summer kicking into full gear, our Take Back the Tech workshops are back.

On Saturday, June 19, 2010 and Saturday, June 26, 2010, we’re holding a 2-part Graphics 101 workshop with graphic designer Maya El-Helou.

Each session will take place between 4:00 PM and 6:00 PM at our office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions).

Given the undeniable power of images and graphics to express ourselves as well as support and/or illustrate our messages, El-Helou will be guiding participants through the use of vector-based design program Adobe Illustrator.

Pre-Requisites: No design skills are required. But participants should have Illustrator installed on their computers. If you don’t have the program on your computer, please come to the workshop at least 10 minutes earlier, so that we can install it for you.

The workshop is free of charge. Places are limited to 15. To register, please email farah@nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. Priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

Arab Techies and Social Media Exchange (SMEX) have teamed up to host a meeting in Lebanon on 11-15 May 2010. The objective is for women techies to meet up, exchange skills and ideas, discuss collaborations, talk about tech from a gender perspective, and network. Our member Nadine Moawad met with Jessica Dheere from SMEX last week and proposed that our new Take Back the Tech / Arabia program which we launched at Nasawiya two weeks ago partner up with the organizers to support young women using technology for social change.

The agenda of the meeting is very flexible. Participants will be proposing different workshops they’d like to give / receive. And together, we can definitely make sure it’s a great empowering feminist meeting. You can read more here and email info@arabtechies.net to participate. The organizers are sponsoring 30 female participants from across the Arab world. Feel free to contact us too, if you have any questions or suggestions.

The main criteria are:

• Woman
• Techie (i.e. works with technology, not only internet technology but also communications, engineering, software, hardware, etc.)
• Arab
• Interested in the intersection of gender and tech
• Able to come to Lebanon from May 11 till May 15

Hurry up and apply. They’re on a rolling deadline – as soon as their openings are filled, they will close.

Please forward this to all of your friends who might be interested.

As part of our recently launched Take Back the Tech initiative, we’re holding a blogging workshop entitled “Why Blog? How to Blog? And Then?” on Saturday, 10 April 2010.

Run by software developer and blogger Liliane Assaf, the workshop will take place between 11:00 AM and 1:oo PM at our office in Mar Mikhael (call 01-447192 for directions).

Assaf, who’s been blogging since July 2006 at Independence ’05: Thoughts and Opinions from Beirut, will show participants how to set up a blog, explain the different forms of blogging, and will give tips on how to maintain and market a blog using social media.

The workshop is free of charge. Places are limited to 15. To register, please email farah[at]nasawiya.org with a little bit about you. Priority goes to young women and young activists of both or neither gender.

After a series of successful workshops on empowering young women to use ICTs for social change and an equally successful gender initiative at ArabNetME, Nasawiya is thrilled to announce the launch of Take Back the Tech in Beirut. We are now part of a global collective of organizations, feminists, and geeks working on reclaiming information and communication technology (ICT) to promote gender equality.

With Take Back the Tech / Arabia, we aim to:

• Encourage, train, and support young women to use ICTs creatively, purposefully, and efficiently
• Encourage girls to geek up and venture into tech-related careers
• Promote a gender lens among tech initiatives in the Arab world, especially those in the non-profit sector
• Create and support online initiatives, programs, and applications to fight violence against women
• Bridge feminism and communication rights in the Arab world

We invite you to join forces with us! For more information, email n.moawad[at]gmail.com

Maya Zankoul's own illustration of our workshop

“Our emotions change very quickly. We should be able to draw them out quickly too,” said web developer/comics artist Maya Zankoul at the beginning of the workshop she held at our office on Saturday, 27 March 2010.

She explained how illustration is a way of communication, of representation, and how the right brain is intuitive and random, allowing us to see that a stick is not just a stick.

And then, she invited us to draw something that bothered us. Some of us used pencils and papers; others used Paint and Illustrator, which Maya uses for her autobiographical blog, Maya’s Amalgam.

So we all let it rip. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What do you think of these illustrations?

If your illustration is not here, please do forward it to us and we’ll add it to the gallery.